The stats of new COVID-19 cas­es and re­lat­ed deaths over the last week - the first since the re­moval of the mask man­date - give rise to cau­tious op­ti­mism that we are fi­nal­ly mov­ing back in­to nor­mal liv­ing with­out ma­jor im­pact.

Over the last week, from Ju­ly 18 (the day af­ter the re­moval of the mask man­date) to Ju­ly 24, the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed a to­tal of 883 new cas­es and five deaths.

This rep­re­sent­ed a slight im­prove­ment over the pre­vi­ous week, which fea­tured 943 new cas­es and 11 deaths over the same pe­ri­od.

It will take at least one more week for the au­thor­i­ties to be­gin get­ting a bet­ter over­all pic­ture but the fact that the num­bers have been on the de­cline af­ter the masks came off, is en­cour­ag­ing.

The stats, how­ev­er, are not the on­ly en­cour­ag­ing signs.

For weeks, it seemed that thou­sands across the coun­try were wait­ing to ex­hale by count­ing down the days to the lift­ing of one of the last bar­ri­ers be­tween a full re­turn to pre-COVID-19 ac­tiv­i­ties.

Yet, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment gave the green light, it quick­ly be­came clear that there were thou­sands more who were not ready to throw cau­tion, and their masks, to the wind.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh ac­knowl­edged it ear­ly, point­ing out at last Wednes­day's Health Min­istry brief­ing that he was hap­py to see many peo­ple were go­ing about their ac­tiv­i­ties with their masks still on. From his per­spec­tive, he saw that the vast ma­jor­i­ty "were re­al­ly in­tel­li­gent" by man­ag­ing their per­son­al risks.

"They are do­ing the right thing," Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said.

That the trend con­tin­ued for the rest of the week, speak­ing vol­umes of the de­gree of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that ex­ists through­out so­ci­ety and un­mask­ing a re­al­i­ty that was pre­vi­ous­ly un­clear - that the mes­sages high­light­ing the ad­van­tages of mask-wear­ing against trans­mis­sion have been ac­cept­ed by many.

The Gov­ern­ment has every right to be buoyed by this, giv­en that its vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign didn't en­gen­der the same con­fi­dence as we're see­ing with the masks now.

Care­ful mon­i­tor­ing, how­ev­er, re­mains crit­i­cal.

This past week­end saw an­oth­er set of mas­sive crowd events, in­clud­ing a three-day Tribe band launch with a pa­rade across Ari­api­ta Av­enue on Fri­day, a fete at the Jean-Pierre Com­plex Sat­ur­day and a J'ou­vert-type 'Las Lap' par­ty at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um on Sun­day. There was al­so a Car­ni­val-based event at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies' St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

What makes these events dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous big fetes held ear­li­er this year - all of which al­so saw thou­sands gath­ered with­out masks - was that those leav­ing this past week­end's fetes are now in­ter­act­ing with thou­sands who, for the first time in months, are with­out masks.

For those ex­er­cis­ing their rights not to con­tin­ue wear­ing masks, the chances of con­tract­ing the virus now are greater than be­fore.

It's for this rea­son we com­mend those who have heed­ed the call to take their own per­son­al safe­ty mea­sures in hand.

The Gov­ern­ment has been care­ful to re­move the mea­sures lay­er by lay­er to a point where all that still re­mains are the wear­ing of masks at health in­sti­tu­tions and cour­t­hous­es.

That some see it fit to adopt the same lev­els of cau­tion in re­mov­ing their per­son­al safe­ty guards lay­er by lay­er, is most cer­tain­ly a breath of fresh air.