Street food sell­ers were back out yes­ter­day af­ter two months of lock­down and it was heart­en­ing to see that those sell­ing and those pur­chas­ing were obey­ing COVID pro­to­cols of keep­ing so­cial dis­tance and wear­ing masks.

It is, of course, up to the street sell­ers to en­sure that no pro­to­cols are bro­ken. They would do well to en­sure that their cus­tomers ad­here to strict guide­lines that they them­selves should lay down since no one would want to have to go back in­to lock­down and lose sales again.

Yes­ter­day, as the sales restart­ed, there was a heavy po­lice pres­ence on Ari­api­ta Av­enue as of­fi­cers kept a close eye on the crowd of peo­ple and they of­fered their ad­vice to the ven­dors as to how they can as­sist in en­sur­ing there are no breach­es to the reg­u­la­tions.

One of­fi­cer told a ven­dor to put up a sign that says once there are more than five peo­ple in the line they should wait in their car and on­ly join when some­one leaves.

Sound ad­vice was giv­en that of­fi­cers would be well with­in the law as stip­u­lat­ed in the Reg­u­la­tions to shut down any es­tab­lish­ment that is found to be in breach of COVID reg­u­la­tions.

It should not be that cit­i­zens need to be told all the time or that po­lice need to con­tin­u­ous­ly be pa­trolling in or­der to en­sure that the right thing is be­ing done.

Loss of liveli­hoods and the im­pact on fam­i­lies dur­ing the lock­down should be enough in­cen­tive for those who are back in the food re­tail busi­ness to un­der­stand that breach­es have con­se­quences.

It's not just the pop­u­lar dou­bles that peo­ple were hap­py to get, many oth­er fast-food es­tab­lish­ments were al­so back in busi­ness for take­out on­ly.

This is a time that re­quires every­one to come to­geth­er and do the right thing. It can­not be that in the rush to pur­chase cit­i­zens ig­nore the pro­to­cols.

Ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers would be well with­in their right to pro­tect their busi­ness­es and their cus­tomers by re­fus­ing to sell to any­one who does not want to obey set guide­lines and pro­to­cols.

In this time as the coun­try re­opens, it is the right of every busi­ness own­er, whether dou­bles ven­dor, food cart own­er or big busi­ness food fran­chis­es to put clear guide­lines for the pub­lic to fol­low.

If they don't then the busi­ness own­ers, who­ev­er they are, must do what they have to do.

Along with the re­open­ing of food and con­struc­tion, cit­i­zens are once again al­lowed to ex­er­cise out­doors, the air­port has al­so re­opened and flights are bring­ing in vis­i­tors and na­tion­als who have been abroad in some in­stances for months.

This re­open­ing at a time when the Delta Vari­ant is run­ning rings against US and British of­fi­cials pos­es its own dan­gers, but it is im­por­tant as the gov­ern­ment moves to get lives and liveli­hoods back on track, some­thing that will take a long time to achieve.

In France, the gov­ern­ment has gone the route of manda­to­ry vac­cines for health work­ers and COVID-19 pass­es for any­one who wants to go to a restau­rant, shop­ping mall or hos­pi­tal.

Those mea­sures Pres­i­dent Macron said were need­ed be­cause of the grow­ing num­ber of Delta Vari­ant cas­es.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are far from that.

But we have a du­ty to be re­spon­si­ble.

Each of us has a role to play. As im­por­tant as ob­serv­ing the pro­to­cols when pur­chas­ing food is get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. The more cit­i­zens who are vac­ci­nat­ed the bet­ter our chance of bat­tling COVID-19.

This s a war in which all of us are sol­diers, we can't af­ford to make mis­takes even as we get back to some sense of nor­mal­cy.