Our small island has just hit a not-so-desirable 2020 milestone, with Malta’s COVID-19 mortality rate now officially the highest in Europe.

Today’s European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s update compared Malta’s 14-day average of virus-related deaths to the rest of the continent’s.

At 3.6 deaths per 100,000, Malta’s mortality rate is now even higher than Spain’s, the previous record-holder, with 3.4.

For context, a total of 31,614 COVID-19 positive people have died in Spain so far.

Other major European countries like United Kingdom, Italy and Germany all registered a mortality rate of 0.6 or less.

Czechia, which just last week saw Health Minister Adam Vojtěch resign as a sign that “the country’s effort to contain the pandemic has gone sideways”, has a current mortality rate which is less than half that of Malta’s, at 1.5

It’s been a tragic couple of weeks in Malta, with a slew of deadly deaths pushing the number of virus-related deaths from single digits to 35 at the time of writing.

In fact, mere minutes ago, an 85-year-old man became the latest virus-related death to be announced.