The ar­rival of the vir­u­lent Brazil­ian vari­ant to T&T, com­bined with a sharp spike last week to 1,305 ac­tive cas­es and 158 deaths, are COVID-19 red flags we can no longer ig­nore.

In­dia was a vic­tim of its own com­pla­cen­cy due to its ear­ly suc­cess­es in cur­tail­ing the sec­ond wave and its vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Like us, In­dia opened up their econ­o­my, which was cor­rect to save liveli­hoods, but peo­ple got com­pla­cent, re­vert­ed to pop­ulist mass gath­er­ings, lead­ing to melt­ing cre­ma­to­ri­ums, mass graves, a col­lapsed health sys­tem.

In Trinidad, the com­pla­cen­cy comes from par­ty­go­ers at zess­er fetes, wed­ding guests from Kel­ly Vil­lage to re­cep­tions in Fair­ways, push­ing us to­wards an­oth­er lock­down lead­ing to a jump from two new cas­es a day in March to as high as 167 a day. To put it in per­spec­tive, these num­bers are high­er than the UK's rate of in­fec­tion and rough­ly 50 per cent of In­dia's in­fec­tion rate.

Giv­en that lock­downs are dam­ag­ing to all economies and throw more peo­ple in­to pover­ty, mass vac­ci­na­tion is the on­ly so­lu­tion.

When this round of As­traZeneca vac­ci­na­tions (73,600 dos­es) is com­plete, on­ly about two to three per cent of us will be vac­ci­nat­ed.

With over 300,000 new cas­es a day, a short­age of raw vac­cine ma­te­ri­als, In­dia needs the vac­cines ini­tial­ly promised to CO­V­AX.

The African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form has promised us 85,000 more with no con­firmed ar­rival date.

There are re­ports we won't be get­ting As­traZeneca till Sep­tem­ber. Mod­er­na; Sanofi; Sinopharm–all up in the air.

Par­tial lock­downs as we cur­rent­ly have and strict ad­her­ence to the Gov­ern­ment's COVID guide­lines are all we must keep us safe un­til we get suf­fi­cient vac­cines to pro­tect 70 per cent of us–that's some 1.9 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es, as­sum­ing two jabs for max­i­mum ef­fi­ca­cy.

This past fort­night as the Gov­ern­ment rolled out its first ma­jor COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme of As­traZeneca jabs re­vealed the dis­crep­an­cy in the take-up rates of the vac­cine be­tween dif­fer­ent sec­tions of our pop­u­la­tion.

Many peo­ple from low-in­come ar­eas, both ur­ban and rur­al, hes­i­tat­ed to book ap­point­ments and failed to show up to many of the 26 cen­tres beau­ti­ful­ly set up across the coun­try. Med­ical staff right­ly didn't turn away peo­ple who did show up from out­side these com­mu­ni­ties.

The di­vide was nev­er so clear. I hope I'm proven wrong, but it ap­peared that those most ea­ger for the vac­cine were peo­ple from more pros­per­ous, more ed­u­cat­ed ar­eas of Trinidad.

I took my el­der­ly par­ents to the Mor­vant Health Cen­tre, re­as­signed from Barataria Health Cen­tre. The fa­cil­i­ty was spot­less and or­gan­ised, the nurs­es ex­cep­tion­al­ly ef­fi­cient and kind, and our ex­pe­ri­ence was echoed in health cen­tres coun­try­wide.

But many peo­ple who qual­i­fied for these rounds of the vac­cine and who were most at risk with chron­ic dis­eases (ridicu­lous­ly high in T&T) didn't show up.

It was heart­break­ing.

From Mor­vant to Cou­va, I heard every­thing from the bizarre (the vac­cine turns you

in­to a horse) to the ru­moured (it gives you her­pes, erec­tile dys­func­tion, makes chron­ic ill­ness­es worse and makes you bar­ren). Oth­ers said COVID-19 is a set up by big phar­ma. Most peo­ple who re­fused to take the vac­cine are mis­trust­ful of gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty be­cause they don't trust their in­ter­ests have been served by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments who re­main un­ac­count­able to the pop­u­lace.

All their con­cerns need to be ad­dressed.

Peo­ple must get a clear mes­sage that the vac­cines are safe, safer than the high­er prob­a­bil­i­ty of get­ting very ill or dy­ing from the virus.

The Gov­ern­ment must part­ner with the me­dia or cre­ate a mass ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign in a short space of time be­fore the next batch of vac­cines ar­rives. Un­less we get herd im­mu­ni­ty of be­tween 70-90 per cent, peo­ple will die from COVID and our health ser­vice will be over­whelmed. Check In­dia.

World­wide the COVID-19 virus has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly at­tacked the vul­ner­a­ble–the el­der­ly, the poor, and those with co-mor­bidi­ties. Trinidad will be no ex­cep­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as our in­ci­dence of chron­ic dis­eases is ridicu­lous­ly high.

Any spend­ing for vac­cines and aware­ness will be low­er than the lock­down cost to the econ­o­my ($6 bil­lion last year).

This vac­cine dri­ve showed us clear­ly that Gov­ern­ment needs to re­gain the pop­u­la­tion's trust and for lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple, so they pro­tect rather than pun­ish our most vul­ner­a­ble. As In­dia has shown us, the col­lapse of cit­i­zens in a pan­dem­ic brings na­tions to their knees.