Some 70 migrants jumped overboard from the Spanish rescue ship Open Arms on Thursday, in an attempt to swim to the nearby southern Italian city of Palermo.
Those who jumped into the sea, part of a group of more than 270 people, were picked up by Italian coastguard and police ships.
The Italian coastguard have transferred two pregnant women and one of their husbands onto land for medical assistance in recent days.
However, numbers have picked up again in 2020 although Rome banned rescue ships from docking in its ports due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sometimes those saved at sea are transferred to ferries and quarantined there, off the Italian coast.