Come Mon­day, thou­sands of stu­dents in Forms Four to Six will re­turn to phys­i­cal school­ing, join­ing over 8,000 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents who did so at the start of the month.

This will see both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren be­ing ed­u­cat­ed un­der one roof.

It is a po­lar­iz­ing top­ic, which has left some par­ents hap­py and oth­ers quite con­cerned for the health and safe­ty of their young charges.

The re­turn to face-to-face class­es comes mere weeks be­fore mem­bers of the pub­lic ser­vice are al­so sched­uled to end their work from home ro­ta­tion and re­port to job sites in full on No­vem­ber 1.

Al­so on that day, bars and restau­rants that are part of TT Safe Zone ini­tia­tive can recom­mence full ser­vice and serve al­co­hol to ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed pa­trons.

Grad­u­al­ly, more and more peo­ple are scal­ing down on on­line work-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, end­ing mea­sures aimed at lim­it­ing close phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion in num­bers and the re­sump­tion of some as­pects of life be­fore COVID-19 are re­turn­ing.

How­ev­er, this al­so comes against the back­drop of de­clin­ing in­ter­est in vac­ci­na­tions, al­though this coun­try is cur­rent­ly of­fer­ing four choic­es — more than most coun­tries — and mak­ing ac­cess to them even eas­i­er.

Based on sta­tis­tics analysed from the Min­istry of Health, the sev­en-day rolling av­er­age for vac­ci­na­tions na­tion­al­ly stood yes­ter­day at 3,972.

Since Oc­to­ber 11, it has been on a down­ward trend de­spite the ap­peal of recre­ation and en­ter­tain­ment be­ing of­fered by the Safe Zones and the re­turn to school for vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents.

The re­peat­ed ap­peals from health of­fi­cials have al­so not been able to sway some peo­ple in­to see­ing the im­por­tance of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed. But no mat­ter which end of the spec­trum one stands at, it is clear the coun­try is now at a piv­otal junc­ture in man­ag­ing and liv­ing with COVID-19.

As the num­ber of Delta vari­ant cas­es climb and with the coun­try’s COVID dai­ly death rate still alarm­ing­ly high, there must be an ex­treme mea­sure of cau­tion as work­ers head back to the of­fice and more chil­dren, teach­ers and sup­port staff re­turn to the phys­i­cal school en­vi­ron­ment.

Strict ad­her­ence to the COVID health pro­to­cols—wear­ing masks, ad­e­quate spac­ing and sani­tis­ing—must con­tin­ue to be main­tained.

Now more than ever, cit­i­zens can­not let their guards down. The same too can be said about the Gov­ern­ment and health of­fi­cials. There must be de­ci­sive plan­ning and ac­tion mov­ing for­ward and ac­tiv­i­ty in sev­er­al key sec­tors must be de­signed to ex­tract blue­prints for adap­ta­tion on a larg­er scale in fu­ture.

Giv­en the cur­rent vac­ci­na­tion num­bers, the Prime Min­is­ter’s goal of hav­ing 70 per cent of the coun­try ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed by year’s end seems less and less re­al­is­tic, un­less, of course, some­thing dras­tic hap­pens.

For cer­tain, how­ev­er, we can­not sim­ply re­turn to nor­mal come next week and No­vem­ber 1 with the threat of COVID-19 still loom­ing. So, ide­al­ly, it still comes down to more cit­i­zens who can do so, mak­ing the choice to get in­oc­u­lat­ed and en­sur­ing that all of the safe­ty pro­to­cols are fol­lowed in the spaces which will be opened up soon.