MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Picardo reflects on Gibraltar's response to the Covid-19 crisis

The pandemic was a turning point, Picardo stressed

Chief Minister Fabian Picardo of Gibraltar reflected on the Covid-19 pandemic, five years after the first lockdown, calling it a “turning point in history.” Speaking at a press conference earlier this week, he described the severe challenges faced during the crisis, including the potential for thousands of deaths and the need to expand mortuary capacity.

“The worst-case scenarios were utterly unthinkable,” Picardo said Tuesday. “We were told that if the virus spread unchecked, Gibraltar could face several thousand deaths.”

While highlighting both local community's resilience, he also announced plans for a medically-led ”lessons learned” inquiry, rather than a judicial one, to be completed within the year, aiming to document the experience and prepare for future crises after 114 people died of Covid-19 in Gibraltar.

“I also want us to remember where we were then and where we are now because five years after our first lockdown there are important lessons we must learn from the Covid pandemic,” he said.

“We think a lessons learned inquiry is a better exercise for Gibraltar,” he added. “We think it's more important that our inquiry will be led medically rather than legally and we'll be setting out timelines for that, quite tight timelines, in order to be able to deliver a result hopefully during the course of this calendar year.”

“So that five years on we can put what we might call a lid on Covid, by having all of the lessons learned ready and the whole chronology from the beginning of the first lockdown to the lessons learned enquiry all done in five years, ready for those in the future who might have to look back at how we dealt with things now [and] might want to learn from what happened and how we dealt with things,” Picardo also pointed out.

In addition, he noted global instability exacerbated by the pandemic, Brexit, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the increase in borrowing to manage Covid costs, despite which Gibraltar’s economy has recovered beyond pre-pandemic levels.

Picardo also addressed missed opportunities, such as environmental policy shifts, and the rise of misinformation during the crisis, which has fostered mistrust in institutions. He emphasized the importance of unity and preparedness for ongoing and future challenges, including Brexit, which remains “an unresolved running sore.”