The growing appreciation for Malta’s medical personnel was demonstrated tangibly on Tuesday night when bursts of applause broke out in several towns and villages. May the clapping and sundry noise become louder with every passing day as more and more people acknowledge the priceless, selfless work that these people are doing, and are increasingly being called upon to do, as COVID-19 spreads.
What those in the medical profession have known for some time is slowly dawning on the rest of the population – that some of us and our loved ones may contract the coronavirus in the near future.
It’s a reality that some are already having to face. Behind that reality are a cohort of unsung heroes who will suffer disproportionately from it. It is not just the vulnerable who are in the direct firing line of this virus but the health workers who care for them.
Apart from the worries they must have about transmitting the virus, they face long hours, physical and emotional stress and exhaustion; all factors, combined with greater exposure to the pathogen, that make them the most likely population group outside the elderly to succumb to it.
They are not blind to the challenges. They go to work every day to save others, like firefighters in a forest blaze, knowing full well they can be victims as well as saviours.
They are underpaid, often taken for granted until they are needed and, long after the virus has gone, will experience psychological trauma that most people outside the military have no idea about: post-traumatic stress disorder. They are not robots. They feel, they suffer, they remember.
Yet, some patients will insist on lying, faking their travel history and denying they have had contact with high-risk individuals, and not even take basic precautions to protect the people treating them. The less selfish proportion of our nation deserve better than that.
Malta faces a unique situation. We are an open country, which is only now being closed down. We are also a tiny, densely populated nation which has limited human and technical resources.
We do not have the luxury larger countries have of farming out victims to neighbouring regions less affected by COVID-19.
The number of intensive care beds is what we have, and even if we expand them overnight, the number of staff trained to treat patients in those beds is finite.
The more stretched that group of people are, the more likely they will make mistakes and fall ill themselves. Italy, a country of 60 million people, is now being forced to take hard decisions on who to admit to intensive care. It took them four weeks to reach that stage.
We will come to that stage earlier without the stringent curbs and self-discipline needed to limit public movement to the bare minimum possible.
We must adopt any means, possibly even more drastic than our neighbours, to ensure that the very limited capacity we have to deal with this crisis is not swamped overnight.
We cannot stop infection but we can delay it. A more gradual curve of increase in infections and critical cases, permitting our health services to cope and adapt, and allowing our health care workers respite not to burn out too early, may still be within our grasp if everyone takes action now to drastically reduce the chances of catching or transmitting the virus.
Otherwise, think Italy.