Two important things happened yesterday in Trinidad and Tobago. Students from Forms Four through Six, vaccinated and unvaccinated, returned to in-person classes after more than a year of being at home due to the pandemic, and the fears of the Health Minister over the weekend became a startling reality with word that there are only three more Intensive Care Unit (ICU) spaces available in the parallel healthcare system for COVID-19 patients.
As children returned to schools, one would have expected a sense of joy that finally, they were back with their peers and in front of their teachers. But that joy was also marked by the hesitancy of some parents to allow their children to return due to safety concerns over the mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated students, as well as unvaccinated support staff, in environments where it is also hard to keep strict social distancing protocols. Some parents made it clear that if anything happened to their children at school, they would sue the Ministry of Education for putting their lives at risk.
It is indeed concerning that parents hold this view heading into a new era in education in T&T, but the reason for this also rests on their shoulders. This is because thousands of children who have access to the Pfizer vaccine are not being allowed to take it by those who hold responsibility for their care, leaving them more exposed to the virus.
We agree there is still free choice, but on the flip side, we have what is happening at the nation’s hospitals regarding COVID patients. The ICU units are bursting at the seams with unvaccinated patients who are critically ill with the virus.
Yesterday, Principal Medical Officer of Institutions Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards, noting that 54 of the 57 ICU beds in the parallel healthcare system were occupied and 96 per cent of the patients were not fully vaccinated, again warned this trend cannot continue.
In a country where citizens have a choice of four vaccines, it is difficult to fathom why people who can do so still have a fear or hesitancy about taking them. The reality is that the country is returning to a sense of normalcy while, at the same time, the Delta variant is spreading across communities. Several sectors of society, noting that we have to learn to live with the virus, had pleaded with the Government to ease measures to allow the country to return to a sense of normalcy and they are now getting that relief.
However, the science shows that vaccines afford a fighting chance to stave off severe attacks from the virus. So even as society attempts to return to this sense of normalcy it is craving, citizens must also choose life over death by taking the vaccines for that extra layer of protection. Without an uptick in vaccinations, we could see the parallel healthcare system being overwhelmed and in a small country such as T&T, the high death rate seen in other countries since the onset of the pandemic could very well become our reality.
We are certain no one wants that to materialise. We have the power to stop the statistics from climbing. All it takes is a vaccine.