Businesses had not reported an increase in the number of people calling in sick since swine flu surfaced in Malta earlier this month, the president of the Malta Employers' Association, Pierre Fava said.
"There have been no red lights," he said when contacted.
The association had been contacting its members on a regular basis for updates on the situation but none had reported a rise in the number of people reporting sick whether because they had been diagnosed with swine flu or because they feared they could have contracted the virus.
Most of those who had fallen ill recovered quickly and described the virus, which has spread globally, as being very similar to seasonal influenza.
One patient did not even realise he was suffering from the flu, let alone H1N1, because all he felt was a stiff neck and a pain in the back.
However, some people who got the sniffles have been asking for the antiviral Tamiflu, even if they were not diagnosed with swine flu but had a common cold or another strain of influenza.
The authorities are stressing that a runny nose is no reason to take antivirals because this could lead to a resistant virus.
Charmaine Gauci, director at the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Department, stressed that even those who had stocked on antivirals should only take them on doctor's orders. "We do not want to create resistance to antivirals through misuse," Dr Gauci said.
On July 8, a week after the first cases of the H1N1 virus were confirmed in Malta, the authorities changed their battle plan and started to treat with antivirals only patients in vulnerable groups if they tested positive for the flu subtype causing the pandemic.
These included children under five, pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses such as heart, respiratory and kidney problems. This was in line with advice from the World Health Organisation.
But Dr Gauci said those who did not fall within these categories were not being ignored, even though the majority of patients suffered from a mild to moderate illness. "If a healthy person who gets the flu does not improve, he will be treated and possibly admitted to hospital," she said, adding doctors had been told to keep a watchful eye on their patients.
She insisted that the reason why the authorities were not giving antivirals to everyone was not because of a lack of supplies because Malta had enough stocks to cover 35 per cent of the population. "We do not want to give unnecessary medication to those who do not need it," she said, adding this could potentially lead to the virus becoming resistant to antivirals.
Until a vaccine against the H1N1 virus causing the pandemic is developed, antivirals remain the main line of defence to contain the severity of the illness.
The first cases of swine flu in Malta were identified on July 1 in two rugby players who had just returned from Spain. The numbers have since gone up to 116, 102 of whom have recovered. The oldest patient was a 63-year-old, followed by a 47-year-old. According to Dr Gauci none of the patients required intensive treatment.