Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day got the dis­turb­ing news that no wants want to hear—our head of gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ­— had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

In­for­ma­tion from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that Dr Row­ley be­gan ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms on Mon­day and was test­ed, with the re­sults com­ing back pos­i­tive. The Prime Min­is­ter has been un­der med­ical care since then in To­ba­go, where he had gone for the four-day long East­er week­end like the over 10,000-plus cit­i­zens from Trinidad who chose this short va­ca­tion op­tion.

Giv­en his med­ical his­to­ry, how­ev­er, Dr Row­ley falls in­to the cat­e­go­ry of hun­dreds of cit­i­zens at greater risk for height­ened com­pli­ca­tions as a re­sult of con­tract­ing the dis­ease. In this re­gard, this me­dia house joins the na­tion in wish­ing the Prime Min­is­ter speedy re­cov­ery, know­ing full well that the med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers who have tak­en care of cit­i­zens dur­ing this try­ing pe­ri­od of the pan­dem­ic will con­tin­ue to do their best.

It is un­for­tu­nate Dr Row­ley would have con­tract­ed the dis­ease mere hours be­fore he was sched­uled to take his first shot of the As­traZeneca vac­cine that on­ly re­cent­ly ar­rived for the in­oc­u­la­tion dri­ve that start­ed yes­ter­day. Row­ley, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes were sched­uled for in­oc­u­la­tion, they be­ing in the 60-plus age brack­et tar­get­ed in the first phase of vac­ci­na­tion.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh and Pres­i­dent Weekes got their jabs as sched­uled and this me­dia house hopes that they, along with PM Row­ley, who will now have first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the dis­ease’s ef­fects, will use this sit­u­a­tion to be­come the coun­try’s main ad­vo­cates for COVID in­oc­u­la­tion ed­u­ca­tion.

It goes with­out say­ing that as Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Row­ley has a busy sched­ule which brings him in­to con­tact with scores of peo­ple and there­in lies part of the prob­lem with man­ag­ing this dead­ly dis­ease. It is im­pos­si­ble for any­one to de­ter­mine who is po­ten­tial­ly car­ry­ing COVID-19, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they are ex­hibit­ing no symp­toms. This is why cit­i­zens have to be their own best first line of de­fence by wear­ing masks, sani­tis­ing, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and most im­por­tant­ly, stay­ing at home when feel­ing ill.

The undis­ci­plined be­hav­iour of some cit­i­zens over the past cou­ple weeks, which led to an­oth­er spike in cas­es, has now cost those stu­dents due to sit the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion on June 10 the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn to school on April 12 as orig­i­nal­ly hoped by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly. Hope­ful­ly, these cit­i­zens will take note of what has now be­fall­en the Prime Min­is­ter, who has led the Gov­ern­ment’s call for cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant against the dis­ease since it hit T&T’s shores last year, and change their be­hav­iour.

How­ev­er, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion al­so re-em­pha­sis­es the im­por­tance of the Gov­ern­ment en­sur­ing it ac­quires more vac­cines to achieve the herd im­mu­ni­ty sta­tus the coun­try needs to reach in quick time. On that note, there­fore, we hope Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh en­sures those el­i­gi­ble for in­oc­u­la­tion in this first phase are ful­ly ap­prised of the process for do­ing so and that the rest of the pop­u­la­tion is ed­u­cat­ed on the sig­nif­i­cance of tak­ing the vac­cines go­ing for­ward.