A 92-year-old survivor of the poliovirus is now sewing face masks to fight the coronavirus.

A few weeks ago, retired seamstress Therese Micallef was asked by someone who works at her nursing home whether she could still sew and if she’d like to make masks.

She immediately said yes.

“At first I tried using the home’s sewing machine but I couldn’t. So I asked them to fetch mine from the house where I used to live. I know that machine like the back of my hand,” she said over the phone from Dar Saura, a Church home for the elderly in Rabat where she has been living for the past year.

Now, after years of disuse, her trusty machine – a Singer – is back in action.

“When I turned it on I immediately felt comfortable sewing. I sew the masks in the mornings,” she says, adding that she also occasionally mends clothes for residents at the home.

She talks about her passion for sewing: “I used to sew all sorts of things including wedding dresses for people. I’d go with them to Valletta to choose the fabric and then sew their dress. I loved it,” she recalled.

Therese, the youngest of 17 siblings, contracted polio when she was two, more than two decades before a polio vaccine first came into use, eventually leading to the elimination of the disease from most of the world.

The virus resulted in a long-term disability in one of her legs.

She never married and lived alone in her two-roomed home in Rabat until she was 91 years old – all the while making a living as a seamstress.

Until a vaccine for the coronavirus itself can be mass-produced, the scientific jury is still not settled on the efficacy of wearing non-surgical face masks to prevent transmission or contraction.

Meanwhile, Therese is trying to help fight a source of disease similar to that which caused her own disability.