Af­ter six months un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which was de­clared in the hope of re­duc­ing COVID-19 in­fec­tions and death, the sad re­al­i­ty fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go is that we are now back in the same space we were last May, with the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem over­loaded with cas­es and strug­gling to keep those peo­ple alive.

With the SoE now done, cit­i­zens’ move­ment is no longer re­strict­ed and there is a sense of an im­pend­ing re­turn to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy for many sec­tors of busi­ness, in­dus­try and even so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.

Yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh told cit­i­zens they now have a greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for re­duc­ing the trans­mis­sion of the virus. In­deed, while every­one has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ‘free up’, our lives are now in each oth­ers’ hands. In fact, at no point in time in our his­to­ry has be­ing our broth­er’s keep­er been more im­por­tant. The vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed have an equal bur­den in pre­vent­ing the Delta vari­ant from rav­aging the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta pre­sent­ed by Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, at the start of the SoE on May 15, there was a peak of 472 pa­tients in the par­al­lel sys­tem, fol­lowed by a de­crease. Around Ju­ly 10, there was an av­er­age oc­cu­pan­cy rate of 40 per cent and cas­es even­tu­al­ly dropped to a man­age­able 318, which was main­tained for 113 days un­til Sep­tem­ber 29, when there was an in­crease they have not been able to con­trol since.

The pub­lic, in par­tic­u­lar those who re­fused to vac­ci­nate and ad­just their lifestyles to re­duce risk, did not heed the nu­mer­ous warn­ings. So now, we have an unimag­in­able spike that is see­ing us race to­wards 2,000 deaths and in­fec­tions, with a new record 781 new cas­es re­port­ed yes­ter­day, that have led to even chil­dren be­ing ward­ed in in­ten­sive care units.

It is in­con­ceiv­able that in this sit­u­a­tion, there are still more than 600,000 peo­ple yet to be vac­ci­nat­ed. What is re­al­ly the prob­lem? Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh al­so re­vealed that of the 1.2 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es that had been ad­min­is­tered, there were on­ly 10 ad­verse re­ac­tions, in­clud­ing blood clots and my­ocardi­tis. Weigh this with the fact that of the un­der 1,900 peo­ple who have died, on­ly 56 were vac­ci­nat­ed while 97 per cent were un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

With less than 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, COVID dan­ger con­tin­ues to face us. With the health au­thor­i­ties hav­ing done all they can to pro­vide an ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion to cit­i­zens, we need to ac­cept that it is the delin­quen­cy of those who are play­ing Russ­ian roulette with their lives and those of oth­ers that pos­es the biggest dan­ger to all of so­ci­ety.

We ful­ly sup­port the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion that T&T can­not be locked down again be­cause of those who refuse vac­cines. Yet, in a sce­nario where we are spoiled for vac­cine choice, it will ul­ti­mate­ly be the vac­ci­nat­ed who will have a fight­ing chance to live to tell their sto­ry an­oth­er day. The re­al­i­ty as of to­day is clear. The ul­ti­mate ques­tion, how­ev­er, is where do you want to be when we can fi­nal­ly say we have con­trol of this virus?