ROME – San Marino needed medical masks. Badly. The tiny republic, wedged next to what would be two of Italy’s hardest-hit provinces in the COVID-19 outbreak, had already registered 11 deaths by March 17 — a sizeable number in a country of just 33,000, and a harbinger of worse to come.
So authorities sent off a bank transfer to a supplier in Lugano, Switzerland, to pay for a half-million masks, to be shared with Italian neighbors.
The next day, the truck returned, empty. The company was refusing to provide the masks. Said Dr. Gabriele Rinaldi, director of San Marino's Health Authority: “It was a very bitter lesson.’’ It’s not clear whether the mask supplier, which was not identified, refused to deliver because another customer offered