The vast ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­es in this coun­try are free to re­sume busi­ness this week, chil­dren in Forms 4-6 are back in the class­room once they are vac­ci­nat­ed and there is a promise that soon, the re­main­ing quo­ta of sec­ondary school stu­dents will be al­lowed to re­turn.

Amid the joy that comes with this re­open­ing and the ex­tra free­dom of move­ment, how­ev­er, there re­mains the lin­ger­ing con­cern about the spread of the virus and the fact that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of peo­ple are falling ill and dy­ing from the virus dai­ly, which is now even more crit­i­cal giv­en that the Delta vari­ant has root­ed it­self with­in com­mu­ni­ties.

There are now 49 known cas­es of the dead­ly Delta vari­ant in this coun­try and two pa­tients have died from the strain. Who knows how many more peo­ple are in­fect­ed? There was a re­cent ad­mis­sion that there was wide com­mu­ni­ty spread of the dead­liest of the COVID-19 vari­ants, and yet over a year and a half in­to the fight against the virus Trinida­di­ans seem to be still un­aware of just how life-sav­ing a vac­cine can be.

Yes­ter­day, Di­rec­tor of Women’s Health at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh, re­vealed 744 preg­nant women had been di­ag­nosed with COVID-19 since the start of the pan­dem­ic. Stun­ning­ly, the largest num­ber of cas­es, 161, were record­ed last month and there are al­ready 21 cas­es so far this month.

Not­ing that as of Oc­to­ber 9, 714 preg­nant women had re­ceived a first dose and 374 their full regime of the Pfiz­er vac­cine, Dr Sir­jus­ingh again re­mind­ed that preg­nant women are at high­er risk if they con­tract COVID.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, even as Delta cas­es con­tin­ue to grow, the uptick in vac­ci­na­tion is just not there. Of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to hope those who are hes­i­tant will see the light and ac­cept the vac­cines for what they are — the best lay­er of pro­tec­tion against a virus that is show­ing no signs of let­ting up.

Half a bil­lion dol­lars has been spent by Gov­ern­ment on vac­cines. This coun­try has choic­es many oth­ers don’t have and vac­cines are easy to ac­cess. If they didn’t be­fore, cit­i­zens must come to re­alise that the Delta vari­ant is no joke with com­mu­ni­ty spread, it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore some­one you know or love gets it. Vac­ci­na­tion, there­fore, may be a mat­ter of life and death.

With the death toll now climb­ing to 1,600 in a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 mil­lion, T&T needs to en­sure that those who can take all steps to pro­tect them­selves.

This com­ing week­end, the New Zealand gov­ern­ment is plan­ning a “Su­per Sat­ur­day” vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve that it likens to an elec­tion day, when vac­ci­na­tion cen­tres will be open through­out the day and in­to the evening. Maybe T&T can con­sid­er a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive, com­plete with mu­sic and MPs on hand to en­cour­age their con­stituents to get in­oc­u­lat­ed.

How­ev­er, the safe zones ini­tia­tive means that there is now an­oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty that needs to be close­ly mon­i­tored to en­sure there are no su­per­spread­er events that work to the detri­ment of the en­tire so­ci­ety.