At The Treasury - home to the Ministry of Finance - the coronavirus has been the subject of marathon meetings over the past month, many of which fiscal policy director Peter Lim has been intimately involved in.

He emerged from what one assumes was such a meeting, an hour late for this interview. That same week, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat would announce that a relief package was in the works, to help the transport and tourism sectors hardest hit by the viral epidemic.