Malta is set to criminalise the wilful spreading of the COVID-19 coronavirus with jail time of up to nine years, Lovin Malta is informed.

Sources close to the Justice Ministry said that Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis will soon publish a legal notice which will amend 244A(2) of the Criminal Code, which regulates the criminal transmission of diseases, to add COVID-19 to the list of transmissible diseases.

As per the law, people who know they have been infected with COVID-19 and who knowingly transmit the disease to non-infected people will be liable to imprisonment for a term between four to nine years.