Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment of con­tin­ued COVID-19 re­stric­tions may not have been the news most Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens were ex­pect­ing to hear Sat­ur­day.

With the Prime Min­is­ter adding an­oth­er two weeks of such re­stric­tions, it is hard­ly like­ly cer­tain sec­tors of so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly busi­ness own­ers and ser­vice in­dus­try work­ers ea­ger to re­turn to full eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, would have been pleased.

How­ev­er, based on the in­for­ma­tion di­vulged at yes­ter­day’s up­date, it is clear the coun­try is still well off from fa­cil­i­tat­ing a re­open­ing of more ac­tiv­i­ty.

As of Sat­ur­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram says T&T was av­er­ag­ing 50 new cas­es per day, which trans­lates to a pos­si­bil­i­ty of at least one death per day. The suit­able tar­get is 20 new cas­es per day – con­sid­ered a safe lev­el for coun­tries our size.

Still, a few mea­sures were eased, with gath­er­ings in­creased to 10 peo­ple in pub­lic and 20 at fu­ner­als; the ad­di­tion of four more dai­ly flights be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and re­open­ing Buc­coo Reef and Ca­roni Swamp tours.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was al­so clear about why the con­tin­ued mea­sures are crit­i­cal. The Gov­ern­ment had to bor­row to fi­nance the so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty need­ed to ease the bur­den on those se­vere­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing the first lock­down. This op­tion will not be avail­able go­ing for­ward and so en­sur­ing there is no sec­ond lock­down, a fate en­coun­tered by oth­er coun­tries who rushed to re­turn to nor­mal­cy, is crit­i­cal to staving off the econ­o­my’s en­tire col­lapse.

But this is al­so why Gov­ern­ment must de­vise a plan to al­low hun­dreds of work­ers in the bar/restau­rant sec­tors, un­doubt­ed­ly the most se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the mea­sures, to re­turn to a more work­able form of func­tion­al­i­ty. In­deed, if the en­tire econ­o­my is to ul­ti­mate­ly sur­vive, some sec­tors can­not be kept in abeyance for much longer.

In this re­gard, we are par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed by his re­port of high ab­sen­teeism with­in the pub­lic sec­tor, where a 50 per cent ro­ta­tion­al struc­ture was im­ple­ment­ed to main­tain rea­son­able ser­vice to the pub­lic.

It is dis­ap­point­ing that the of­fend­ing work­ers do not see the sig­nif­i­cance of their ef­fort to the col­lec­tive fight to rid the coun­try of the virus. Mem­bers of the pub­lic who al­so con­tin­ue to dis­obey the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions by not wear­ing face masks, con­gre­gat­ing un­nec­es­sar­i­ly, not phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing or stay­ing at home when feel­ing ill are al­so con­tribut­ing to al­low­ing the virus to mul­ti­ply dai­ly.

Much has been said of Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in fight­ing off this pan­dem­ic. But the pub­lic holds the biggest stake in this ac­tiv­i­ty and it is on­ly through a dis­ci­plined ap­proach to obey­ing the health rec­om­men­da­tions that we will be able to re­turn to liv­ing with a lit­tle less dis­com­fort.

Hav­ing said that, the Prime Min­is­ter’s anal­o­gy of en­sur­ing we do not bite off more than we can chew at this point should be enough of a word for the wise. Lives and liveli­hoods are at stake and every­one has a con­tri­bu­tion to make.