The Covid-19 pandemic proved to be one of the defining periods of the 21st century so far.

From early 2020 until well into 2022, life was surreal and frightening. For some, life changed forever, whether suffering from loss of loved ones or being left with ongoing health problems.

Streets lay empty, hospitals stretched and everyone adapting to the ‘new normal’ – a phrase we all became familiar with.

For the most part, the perception is the Isle of Man dealt with the pandemic well and managed to lift lockdown earlier and for longer than in the UK.

One man who found himself in the eye of the storm was then Health Minister David Ashford.

Recalling the weeks before the pandemic hit, he and his team kept tabs on the spread of Covid through China, South Korea and beyond.

‘It then swept through eastern Europe in January,’ David recalls. ‘Our priority at that point was to reassure the public. When it reached Italy I knew we had to be prepared.

‘We had pandemic plans in place but they had never been tested and our public health team was small and did not have the same expertise as the UK. We looked across the water for advice and support.

‘At that time there was still a lot of uncertainty and it takes time to build up data on viruses. For instance, one week we were warned children were spreading it and the next we were told they weren’t spreading it at all.

‘What we did know is that the R number – the number of people one infected person can spread the virus to – was very high and would devastate a small community like ours without measures in place.’

While the island looked to the UK for support and advice, David realised not everything our neighbours across the water was the right approach.

‘With PPE we established our own supply chains as I did not have confidence the UK could provide it,’ he said.

The day after then Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown in the UK, the island closed its borders on March 24. Two days later the island went into lockdown.

‘When the moment came, we acted very quickly and that weas one of our greatest achievements,’ David explained. ‘We had to suppress the rate the virus was spreading.

‘We have an older population and there were some devastating effects.

‘We just had to get on with it. There was no handbook to follow. The last time there was anything like this was Spanish flu 100 years before.’

David almost took on some kind of celebrity status and in the weeks and months after with people wanting selfies with him.

But such acclaim was furthest from his mind as he worked round the clock with his colleagues and health professionals to suppress the spread of the virus.

‘We had measures we never thought we would have to put in place,’ he said. ‘For me, it was really important to have the daily press conferences and we needed to speak to the public directly.’

While the island largely followed the UK into lockdown, David admits this changed not long after in terms of when to come out of the harsh measures. The island came out of lockdown after just 12 weeks on June 12.

‘It was a simple decision to go into lockdown in many ways and follow Public Health England’s advice as they had the expertise,’ he admits.

‘But that stopped early on as we found some of the decisions made across didn’t make much sense.

‘We took a risky but calculated approach to come out of lockdown earlier. This was when we had no new cases for two weeks.

‘We started slowly by allowing the construction industry to restart and then other sectors before we returned to normal.’

There were more than 100 Covid deaths in the Isle of Man (some figures suggest the final number was 116). This included 20 deaths at the Abbotswood nursing home in Ballasalla.

‘From my point of view, one death is one too many,’ David said. ‘I knew a couple of the victims personally so it was not just professional but a personal issue for me. Every death was felt by everyone here.

‘We did not know how it was all going to go and I lived each day concerned what was going to happen. One of the great tragedies was Abbotswood, it was a seminal moment and I felt it deeply.

Another issue for the island was ensuring Noble’s Hospital was not overwhelmed.

‘Thankfully, we never reached capacity of Noble’s Hospital but we came very close on occasion,’ David admits. ‘We have one hospital and we cannot just send patients to a neighbouring NHS facility if we reached capacity.

‘We had to take an operating theatre offline and turn it into an ICU while we also built a facility to produce our own oxygen.

Testing became a crucial part of tackling the spread of Covid and the Grandstand was transformed into a testing centre.

‘We had never had testing on that scale here before,’ David said. ‘Our laboratory was not geared up for this and we had to thank the expertise of Dr Rachel Glover for expanding the facility.

‘Everyone rallied with trainee nurses and people coming out of retirement to help run the centre.

‘In terms of vaccine, we were one of the top ten in the world for the roll out. I am incredibly proud of all the volunteers who helped make that a success.’

For much of the pandemic, those in the island largely lived normal lives while those in the UK remained either in lockdown or under stringent measures. There were two shorter lockdowns in the island at the start of 2021 and again in February that year.

Once the vaccine programme was in full flow, the Manx Government decided to reopen the border in the summer of 2021 which set the island on a path towards some degree of normality.

Looking back, David has mixed emotions but ultimately feels he did the best job he could during the pandemic.

‘The thing I am most proud of has got to be the actions of the staff at the DHSC and the way everyone just pulled together,’ he recalls. ‘Senior consultants got involved in day-to-day nursing and everyone making sacrifices.

‘Some staff even moved out of the family home to protect their loved ones. Great sacrifices were made.

‘I was also proud of the island community. It sounds a bit corny but there was a war time spirit with neighbours looking out for each other.’

But David is not without some regrets and there are some things he may have done differently.

‘I think the borders should have been shut earlier,’ he concedes. ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I believe closing them that late was the wrong decision.’

He also admits residents caught out by the border closure should have been treated more fairly.

A number of residents out of the island at the time were forced to stay at the Comis Hotel and travelled by coach with a police escort for a mandatory 14-day stay which cost around £1,000 each.

David said: ‘The residents in the UK at the time were put in quarantine for two weeks. I believe they should never have been excluded from their home.’

His political career suffered a setback following former medical director Dr Rosalind Ranson's employment tribunal, which found she was unfairly dismissed while David was in post as Minister of Health during the pandemic.

That has taken the shine off the job David did as health minister during the pandemic. But personal reputation is not a priority for him.

‘I have never thought about my reputation,’ he said. ‘It has never been about me or who likes or dislikes me. I just did what I believed was right. There are people who agree and those who disagree.

‘In five years, I have not really sat down and thought about it or fully processed what happened. It was all on the hoof and a bit of a blur.’