The government has got its approach to COVID-19 largely right. Over the 20 months of the pandemic, it has learnt from its mistakes, evolved its stance on social distancing measures into a cautious one and has pulled out all the stops to ensure the vast majority of the population are fully vaccinated.

It is impossible to keep everyone happy. The measures have at various times and by some sectors been perceived as too liberal and at other times and by other sectors as draconian.

But the end results speak for themselves. The number of hospitalisations from COVID – which has become the true measure of the pandemic’s severity – is relatively low. As we have reported, on one day last November over eight per cent of those suffering from COVID were in hospital. On the same day this November, that figure was just over two per cent.

Health Minister Chris Fearne tweeted out a graph last Tuesday showing Malta at the bottom of the table of deaths from COVID per million over the previous seven days. Malta had zero. Meanwhile, Bulgaria, at the top of the table, was reporting nearly 25 per million.

So hats off to our healthcare leaders for their handling of the situation over the past few months. About midway through the pandemic, a decision seemed to have been taken to allow them to set the direction without being unduly influenced by politics.

It’s all very fragile though. In some parts of Europe, cases are starting to reach new highs, a situation partly attributed to inadequate take-up of the vaccine and partly to waning immunity from those vaccines.

Cases in Malta are on the way up too and there is no reason to doubt that, while our rate of vaccination has been extraordinary, immunity is weakening here too.

The health authorities have been proven right in their decision to start the local vaccine booster campaign earlier than most other European countries. The effect on those segments of the population that have received their third shot has been spectacular, with COVID cases among the vulnerable elderly falling off a cliff.

The danger now is that the booster campaign will fall behind the rising number of cases in the younger populations and that the hospitalisation rate will follow not too far behind. This could happen if the government is either too slow to administer the boosters or if not enough people respond to the invitation to receive them.

The take-up looks promising so far and the health authorities have brought forward the timeline for vaccine delivery to other age groups. There is no time to waste. Once Malta has taken the decision to offer booster shots to the entire population over 12, it must move as fast as possible if the supply of vaccines allows it to.

This is all déjà vu, yet another lap of the race against the virus. The current situation locally is far less alarming than at the height of the pandemic. There is even cause for optimism, with treatment options on the horizon as reinforcements in the battle against the virus, fought so far with vaccines, masks and social restrictions.

But Malta does not live in a bubble. With cases again on the rise all around, there is no place for complacency but all the need for speed and cooperation in the vaccination drive.

And, at all costs, government officials must avoid giving bad examples, the sort that Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis did when he removed his mask during a parliamentary committee meeting, saying he had a mild bout of the flu! His Labour colleagues are not fans of mask-wearing either.

This is arrogance and wilful ignorance. A deadly combination if followed by the rest of us.