For the first time in more than a month, there was a more up­beat tone at the COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing host­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

More en­cour­ag­ing news on the vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion front and very pre­lim­i­nary in­di­ca­tions that the coun­try is be­gin­ning to emerge from the lat­est COVID-19 cri­sis saw the fo­cus shift­ing from the usu­al an­nounce­ments of tighter re­stric­tions to the set­ting of ten­ta­tive time­lines for the re­open­ing of T&T’s bor­ders and re­sump­tion of school.

How­ev­er, while the cau­tious op­ti­mism from gov­ern­ment and health of­fi­cials of­fers a glim­mer of hope this should not be tak­en as a sig­nal to free up.

T&T ap­pears to have dodged a COVID-19 bul­let. So far, the worst-case pro­jec­tions, in­clud­ing as many as 100 deaths a day, have been avoid­ed. But as Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards warned, cit­i­zens should not be “pre­ma­ture­ly com­fort­ed” by the ap­par­ent plateau­ing in the pan­dem­ic num­bers.

While there has been a de­crease in the num­ber of COVID-pos­i­tive cas­es re­quir­ing hos­pi­tal care, oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els at HDUs and ICUs re­main un­ac­cept­ably high, and the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es was 10,064 as of yes­ter­day.

What that means is that the coun­try is not yet even at the be­gin­ning of the end of the pub­lic health cri­sis.

For that rea­son, the cur­few, which will now be­gin ear­li­er on week­ends, re­mains firm­ly in place as do re­stric­tions on all but es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties.

T&T might well be en­ter­ing the most crit­i­cal phase in the fight against COVID-19, where the fo­cus shifts to get­ting at least 600,000 of our 1.4 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion vac­ci­nat­ed. If cur­rent lev­els of vac­cine ac­cep­tance are main­tained, by Sep­tem­ber 1 there might be enough ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed adults for re­sump­tion of more nor­mal ac­tiv­i­ties.

That is why one of the most im­por­tant an­nounce­ments yes­ter­day was of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the State and the pri­vate sec­tor in a “Vac­ci­nate and Op­er­ate” ini­tia­tive.

This lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion is long over­due al­though the pri­vate sec­tor had been in­di­cat­ing for some time its will­ing­ness to work with the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion in the fight against COVID-19.

Ear­ly on, the Ansa McAL Group of­fered help in bring­ing vac­cines in­to the coun­try and an of­fer al­so came from the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT). But the re­spons­es from the Gov­ern­ment were luke­warm at best.

It is in­deed good news that the sec­tor’s sup­port is fi­nal­ly be­ing ac­cept­ed, al­though not in the way ini­tial­ly en­vis­aged.

A crit­i­cal as­pect of re­open­ing the econ­o­my is en­sur­ing the work­force can safe­ly func­tion with­out con­tract­ing and spread­ing COVID-19. The vac­ci­na­tion ini­tia­tive that starts from to­day, where var­i­ous busi­ness groups work with the Min­istry of Health to get their em­ploy­ees vac­ci­nat­ed is to be ap­plaud­ed.

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) gets things start­ed to­day at the Di­vali Na­gar site in Ch­agua­nas and in the com­ing days oth­er groups will roll out their ef­forts.

That, along with im­proved prospects for an un­in­ter­rupt­ed, ac­cel­er­at­ed pro­gramme of vac­ci­na­tions over the next three months should put the pop­u­la­tion in a safer, health­i­er place by In­de­pen­dence Day.

But for now, please heed the words of cau­tion from Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal Dr Michelle Trot­man about con­tin­u­ing to fol­low the pub­lic health pro­to­cols. The fight is not over.