There should be compensations to families who experience a fatality from Covid-19. This is meant to reduce their financial and psychological difficulties especially if the bread winner/s of that family succumbs to the disease. We have witnessed recent episodes when family homes collapsed during adjacent construction works where, despite obvious liability, these families have remained without compensation.
In this article, a highly speculative and pessimistic local scenario is considered. It is a reasoned worst-case situation, considering patterns of other outbreaks around the world. These high estimates are meant to show that the compensation bill is manageable. If warm weather in Malta persists, it may help limit spread as it would the common flu. It is not known if these conditions can influence the spread of Covid-19.
Suggested protocol:
1) Compensation is due to family units with victims involving one or both of a married couple or legally registered social partners with dependent offspring or elders, or couples in virtue of shared dependent minor/s if both are registered as the biological parents or legally adoptive parent/s.
2) Complete or partial compensation to partner of victim amounting to the latter’s declared income, irrespective of whether the partner has a separate income. Ceilings are however to follow recommendations set below. If both members of a partnership succumb and do not have a dependent minor or elder, than no compensation is due
3) Annual compensation should be 100% of victim’s income up to a combined ceiling of €25,000. Between €25,000 and €31,250, compensation remains up to a ceiling of €25,000 to lower rate to 80%. This 80% rate of compensated income is thereafter calculated up to €80,000, the latter receiving the maximum compensation of €64,000.
4) If both partners had an income, the survivor gets 60% of victim’s income. When a combined income was below €25,000, compensation given should bring the compensated income to equal the former combined income. 60% compensation or less is given so that compensated income does not exceed €64,000. If surviving partner has an income of over €64,000, no compensation is due.
5) If the deceased partner had no income and the couple had no dependents, the surviving partner should get an extra 30% of the survivor’s declared income, again, not exceeding a compensated amount of €25,000.
6) Separate assessment for further compensation, even going beyond the standard ceiling of €64,000, to reimburse school fees of dependents. These compensations should not exceed original declared incomes.
7) Partial or complete remuneration of mortgage payments due, even over and above the standard ceiling of €64,000, in order to avoid foreclosures from forfeiture of mortgage obligations. These compensations should not exceed original declared incomes.
8) These annual compensations are given in monthly instalments, like a salary, up to a working age of 63 with an increase of 5% every 10 years.
What would be a plausible bill for a bad Covid-19 epidemic in Malta
Worst-case! 11,000 from the work force (210,000 Maltese and EU citizens) infected, a 2% fatality rate leading to 220 deaths. After several considerations the initial first year bill could amount to €5,500,000. It will reduce substantially to €2,200,000 for the fourth year, reducing annually thereafter at slower rates due to higher incidence of fatalities in the eldest.
Who should pay this bill? There is no discord about what introduced the first cases in a formerly unaffected country. Travel! The team set up recently, involving “stakeholders” of the tourist industry is to discuss the Covid-19 epidemic and the impact (losses) the industry will endure. “Decisions” may have to be taken, meaning travel restrictions. These should be proactive rather than reactive. The name/s of those taking the decisions should be publicly known to ensure accountability and responsibility, ensuring transparency that decisions are taken in the public’s interests, taking priority over business interests.
Importation of the virus is essentially related to the tourist industry. Spread is facilitated by the leisure industry. Compensation should be forked out by the operators of these industries, even though they may be hard hit by the epidemic, but not as hard hit as when a family’s breadwinner succumbs to Covid-19.
Excluding businesses with an annual turnover of under €200,000 from contributing to the compensation fund, bigger businesses should contribute in proportion to the businesses’ turnover. Just 400 of the bigger travel-related and leisure businesses would be forking out an average (worst-case scenario) annual estimate of €14,000 reducing to €5,500 by the fourth year. Considering a more realistic 55 fatalities from the workforce, average initial contribution to the fund would be €3,500 and €1,400 respectively. The taxpayer should not carry the burden but this would be a political decision.
As regards the above-mentioned committee of “stakeholders”… What exactly is proactive? Proactive is cancelling incoming flights from affected areas except for re-entering Malta residents who must undergo testing, assisted and monitored self-quarantine for 14 days, including persons sharing the residence. Proactive is discouraging aggregation at crowded places of entertainment. Proactive is having taken these decisions 15 days before an imported first case is recorded locally. If imported cases are recorded within 15 days from the action, it would be a proactive decision taken too late.
A reactive decision is when the gate is closed after the horse has bolted, being at least 15 days too late. A newly discovered case suggests there could be several more still undiagnosed infected subjects.
Effective proactive decisions are taken in the citizens’ interests favouring containment and low fatality rates. The taxpayer should then compensate victims. Late proactive or reactive decisions are done in the interest of the travel and entertainment industry and they should carry the burden.
Dr Albert Bezzina is medical practitioner with diverse areas of interest. This is an opinion not an epidemiological study. The numbers used to arrive to estimates shown may be requested from the author on email: [email protected]