On the evening of 29 February, 2020, an urgent press conference was called: Luxembourg had recorded its first confirmed case of Covid-19 – the pandemic had officially reached the Grand-Duchy.
At the end of 2019, a new virus emerged in China, setting off the Covid-19 pandemic – a rapidly spreading threat that inched ever closer to Luxembourg’s borders. "We knew we had to prepare ourselves significantly for what was coming", recalls Dr. Emile Bock, an emergency physician in Kirchberg’s intensive care unit, five years later. Initial projections warned that 15% of infected individuals would require hospitalisation, with 5% needing intensive care.
On 29 February, 2020, then-Health Minister Paulette Lenert called a last-minute press conference. "We called you here at very short notice because we must assume at this moment that we have the first confirmed case of Coronavirus in Luxembourg. This is a new moment", she announced.
By the time the virus reached Luxembourg, the crisis had already escalated in other countries. "When we saw the images from Italy, from Bergamo, where people were dying in intensive care because there weren’t enough beds and ventilators, we feared the same could happen to us", says Dr. Thomas Schmoch, an emergency physician at Kirchberg. Fortunately, Luxembourg had a small window of time to prepare.
Still, relief emerged when it became clear that the government grasped the severity of the situation and took decisive action. On 15 March, 2020, then-Prime Minister Xavier Bettel made sweeping announcements: "All cafés, all nightclubs, all cinemas, all libraries will remain closed. Today, we decided that all cultural, sporting, and festive activities must be cancelled for the time being."
At that point, it was already evident that most of the treatments being discussed were ineffective, says Dr. Bock. "People had severe lung disease. They needed oxygen, they needed ventilators. Without lockdown measures, the entire healthcare system would have collapsed. We would have been completely overwhelmed. Patients wouldn’t have had a chance – at least those for whom no machines were available."
Looking back, Luxembourg was relatively well-prepared when the first Covid-19 patients arrived at hospitals. However, it was still an immensely difficult time. "We could keep patients alive on ventilators for a while, but we were constantly faced with the helplessness of not knowing how to truly treat the disease or its effects on the body. In many cases, we had no choice but to watch people die because there was simply nothing more we could do for them", Thomas Schmoch reflects.
Ultimately, it was mass vaccination that brought the pandemic under control. Now, the focus must shift to learning from the crisis. "We need to take a clear-eyed look at what went well and what went wrong. But considering how little we knew at the start, I think we managed quite well – both in medicine and as a society", says Dr. Bock. He stresses that the speed at which science advanced and a vaccine was developed should not be taken for granted. Many things were done right, and that shouldn’t be downplayed.
