It's been over a week since Prof. Charmaine Gauci's last COVID-19 briefing. Quickly becoming a household staple during the pandemic, Prof. Gauci delivered a daily update for almost two months before it was dwindled down to thrice weekly and eventually terminated.

Each press conference drew hundreds, if not thousands, of locals eagerly anticipating updates on the pandemic as well as a soothing and reassuring voice. Dubbed a pillar of strength, the question now arises: Does she miss any of it?

Discussing the subject on tape for Maltese portal Gwida.mt, Prof. Gauci smiled when asked about this and graciously replied: "We see where there is need. In times where there were a lot of cases, I was doing the bulletin daily because I saw that the public was begging for information. The journalists's questions also acted as the voice of the people," she said.

"I felt that once cases started dwindling, and the questions too, we decided to reduce the number of briefings. Now that we're in a different phase I felt there wasn't such a need for a medical bulletin."

So does that mean that she is now more free? Far from! A lot of work goes on behind the scenes, and while briefings have stopped, the rest certainly hasn't: "Only yesterday, some people called me and asked, 'now that your diary is freed up, may I meet up with you?' That was only a small part of my workload" she said.

Elaborating further, Prof. Gauci said monitoring and assessing new cases is an ongoing process, irrispective of the numbers. "Our work is now here where we are continuing with mitigation measures, to issue guidelines as well as preparing for the upcoming phases," she explained.

"COVID is not all our work is about. True, we've focused a lot on it but there is a lot of other work that has to go on in parallel to protect the Maltese public health," she concluded.

Check out the full dialogue here.

Do you miss Prof. Gauci's daily briefings?