The in­creas­ing num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es in T&T and the deaths that fol­low show three things that must con­cern us all.

The first is the coun­try has not brought this lat­est wave un­der con­trol, the sec­ond is there is in­suf­fi­cient dis­ci­pline amongst the pop­u­la­tion in the face of this on­go­ing dead­ly pan­dem­ic and fi­nal­ly, the low lev­el of vac­ci­na­tions leaves us vul­ner­a­ble.

On the first count, the pub­lic health mea­sures that have been tak­en are all with­in the guide­lines that have worked in the past and have shown to be ef­fec­tive glob­al­ly in slow­ing, if not elim­i­nat­ing, the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

It may be that it is in­suf­fi­cient time to see a dif­fer­ence, but the Gov­ern­ment will have to be guid­ed by the Min­istry of Health if there are oth­er mea­sures that may be nec­es­sary to put a dent in­to this wave be­fore it over­pow­ers us all.

We on­ly have to look at the har­row­ing scenes in In­dia to see how eas­i­ly un­con­trolled COVID-19 could over­whelm a health sys­tem.

The sec­ond thing is the COVID-19 fa­tigue and in­dis­ci­pline. Every­one was aware that there would be great dan­ger in the mass gath­er­ings that oc­curred just be­fore and over the East­er week­end.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley com­plete­ly missed the point when peo­ple raised what hap­pened in To­ba­go.

The re­al­i­ty is that there were many videos of beach par­ties, par­ties at the Ny­lon Pool and oth­er parts of To­ba­go as peo­ple sought to get a much-need­ed break from the chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od we are all in.

To there­fore make it about who is blam­ing To­ba­go for the spike is rather un­nec­es­sary. But what it points to is the larg­er ques­tion of in­dis­ci­pline and COVID fa­tigue.

This is not the time to drop the ball and as sol­diers, in this war with the virus, we all have to stand guard at the gate and pro­tect our­selves and our fam­i­lies by ad­her­ing to the health pro­to­cols.

The third is­sue is the chal­lenge of get­ting vac­cines.

The Unit­ed States, Is­rael, Britain and some Eu­ro­pean coun­tries are be­gin­ning to show the ben­e­fit of a suc­cess­ful vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Those coun­tries have be­gun to re­open their economies with the US CDC now al­low­ing a lev­el of pub­lic ex­po­sure with­out face masks if a per­son is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

The UK has ar­tic­u­lat­ed a plan to emerge from lock­down as it has rapid­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed its cit­i­zens.

T&T, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is well be­hind the curve­ball and de­spite the tri­umphal­ism, the re­al­i­ty is less than 3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion has re­ceived the first dose of the vac­cine.

There is al­so great un­cer­tain­ty about when more vac­cines will ar­rive. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day said the next CO­V­AX batch is due in May but gave no of­fi­cial date. While we know that glob­al­ly this is a chal­lenge all gov­ern­ments face, one can­not but feel enough was not done and the Gov­ern­ment dropped the ball on the pro­cure­ment and roll­out of a well-co-or­di­nat­ed vac­cine pro­gramme.

These are dan­ger­ous times and we must act now to save the sit­u­a­tion or face more pain.