January of 2020 was the first time I had heard of the coronavirus. With cases only found in China, it was seen at the time as some sort of tropical disease in a far-flung country. A bit later the lockdowns in China started making the rounds in international news, and I remember the video of people singing from their apartment windows in Wuhan being quite surreal. 

Then the first cases hit Italy. 

In my role as head of secretariat at the Office of the Prime Minister, coronavirus around February was seen as something Europe was going to contain. Until it wasn’t. 

It became extensively clear that we’re all in the deep end of something monumental when the then Italian prime minister stunned Europe in early March and locked down entire northern areas of his country, cordoning off 15 million people.

In Europe, this was unheard of. The Italians themselves told us they were caught on the wrong foot by the ferocity of the disease and that hospitals in Lombardy were struggling.

The situation was becoming critical very quickly. Cases were cropping up in the rest of Europe. From a peripheral topic a few weeks back, myself and the prime minister, together with deputy prime minister, were having daily coronavirus updates.

The initial step was to make sure we had as much data as possible. It was important to understand the numbers of this virus and to take out the emotion out of the fast-moving events. Data showed that the number of registered cases in several European countries was doubling in a matter of two to three days. 

I remember Spain and France had the most compounding numbers. Within a day the prime minister took the very courageous decision, and a first in Europe, to start closing the airport. Passengers from most of Europe were quarantined or banned from entering Malta. Closing the airport was unthinkable at the time, but it had to be done.

Many had criticised the decision, including several ambassadors based in Malta, saying it was extreme and that we will have to do a U-turn in a matter of days.

But numbers don’t lie. The situation continued to intensify in Europe. Closing the airport was crucial not because it was going to stop the virus from entering the country, or because the first wave was going to be the hardest. 

 Those decisions were pivotal because it gave us time to prepare for the battle that was to come. Just enough time for the health experts to learn more about this disease and how it impacts the human body.

This was a world before masks and social distancing; a world we knew little of.

Health experts told us that we were looking at 5,000 deaths in the next few months

The forecasts were grim. Health experts told us that we were looking at 5,000 deaths in the next few months. The body bags were purchased. Unless the government took the right decisions, unless the medical and public service personnel rise to the occasion and unless people follow the directions being given, this was going to become our reality.

The challenges were immense. Everything from the supply chain of our food to our energy provision had to be looked into, to make sure people remained trustful. 

Every day there seemed to be a fire that needed to be extinguished. On some days, there were many fires.

With all this happening in the background one might quickly forget that this was not a short-term rumpus, but a long-term fight.

The solution was a vaccine but it was made extensively clear to us not to expect one before the end of the year. 

From a financial and economic perspective, a decision needed to be taken by the government. It was whether we were to protect the country’s book balances and do the absolute necessities only, or throw the sink at it and pay substantial premium costs on healthcare to procure scarce, but desperately-needed, ventilators, testing kits and PPEs. 

Very early on we made sure we safeguarded the lives and livelihoods of the Maltese.

Last year, we incurred a deficit of close to €1.3 billion, and this year will be no different. But what is the point of a positive book balance if tens of thousands lose their job or if the death rate is considerably higher?

In my time at Castille working with the prime minister, and now as finance minister, I don’t remember one time where we stopped a necessary purchase which would’ve saved lives due to its cost. We did whatever was necessary to save every single life, at no expense spared.

This is something we should all be proud of.

We are, after all, only the 122nd largest island in Europe. Just four of those are states. Selling ourselves short is a national hobby, and we are far from perfect as a country. Every government of every country made errors and misjudgements along the way, including Malta. With no rulebook and an evolving disease with variants, it was a volatile situation and a difficult one to plan and predict. Governments of much larger countries made those mistakes, and perhaps some made much worse ones.

But the fact that the government did whatever it took to save lives and livelihoods is simply the preface of a much bigger story of everyday people which ought to make us proud. The people who worked despite the risks, the people who helped their elderly neighbours and everyday people who made immense sacrifices to pull us through.

Our employment figures show that we managed to protect businesses in the worst of the crisis and with Malta now leading the way in vaccinations per capita in Europe, we look forward to slowly returning to what life used to be while remembering those that perished in this gruesome battle.

But hidden somewhere in this seemingly never-ending COVID-19 nightmare is a story of a small island which pales in the shadow of giants but has a habit of refusing to just be a small island which pales in the shadow of giants.

Clyde Caruana, Minister of Finance