If there was one hope in T&T apart from wish­ing COVID-19 washed away in Mar­aval floods, it was for Olympic gold and T&T’s team mem­bers in­deed ex­hib­it­ed grit to­wards glo­ry.

An­oth­er test of met­tle: T&T man­age­ment in the last year since the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tions. Polls and plau­dits rolling in from to­mor­row, mark­ing Tues­day’s an­niver­sary, will pro­nounce on the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and Op­po­si­tion UNC’s per­for­mance. That dic­tates T&T’s sec­ond year and how much pub­lic brac­ing’s need­ed.

Like Olympic arrange­ments where the road runs ac­cord­ing to ath­letes’ skills, pan­dem­ic land­scape from the first 2020 at­tack to 2021 bat­tle­field dic­tat­ed the ul­ti­mate stress test with un­par­al­leled chal­lenges on health and eco­nom­ic fronts which both sides and T&T have painful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed. All have fall­en down on var­i­ous as­pects. From com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cer­tain han­dling (Gov­ern­ment), par­tic­u­lar ac­tion choic­es (Op­po­si­tion), vi­o­la­tion of some rules and vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy (pub­lic).

Late vac­cine sourc­ing placed T&T be­hind, par­tic­u­lar­ly when cas­es spiked and the Brazil­ian vari­ant—on­ly con­firmed three weeks ago as T&T’s dom­i­nant strain— was ob­served in April. Eco­nom­ic re­open­ing, on­go­ing gin­ger­ly comes when the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Delta vari­ant is wreak­ing hav­oc over­seas with un­vac­ci­nat­ed and younger peo­ple, forc­ing even Chi­na, with its own vac­cines, to shut­downs.

Delta, now syn­ony­mous with doom for un­vac­ci­nat­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly, will place T&T and Gov­ern­ment be­tween rock and ex­treme­ly stony ground on re-open­ings and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls, lat­er this year. T&T, which usu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ences a virus af­ter it rolls through over­seas, watch­es the next three months. Or soon­er, judg­ing from the fact Tues­day’s Health press­er opened with Delta in­for­ma­tion.

Thurs­day’s Min­istry of Health re­lease stat­ed ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple were 203,184 and one-dosers, 407,591. When the lat­ter get their sec­ond dose, T&T’s ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed will to­tal 600,775 (and more af­ter yes­ter­day’s new num­bers) inch­ing clos­er to 900,000 herd im­mu­ni­ty, rac­ing against Delta ar­rival. How the 400,000-plus un­vaxxed de­cide, presents the next hur­dle.

This year has al­so shown star­tling re­gion­al up­heaval in­volv­ing COVID (and re­lat­ed is­sues) in Haiti where Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse was mur­dered Ju­ly 7 and a month lat­er in St Vin­cent, where Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves was pelt­ed and wound­ed by a mis­sile-wield­ing vac­cine pro­test­er on Thurs­day. While the Is­lam­ic Front and some labour lead­ers have op­posed vaxxing push re­gard­ing work­ers, Gov­ern­ment’s tread­ing care­ful­ly, hint­ing manda­to­ry vax might on­ly be con­sid­ered ac­cord­ing to Delta “lash.”

De­spite in­di­ca­tions that break­through cas­es—those vac­ci­nat­ed who may still get Covid—aren’t a fo­cus, track­ing’s need­ed to as­cer­tain how well vac­cines are work­ing and to as­sist plan­ning fur­ther re­open­ing.

While pop­u­la­tion ma­jor­i­ty’s at­tempt­ing to cope, sur­vival hor­ror sto­ries and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty ap­peals un­der­score pres­sure, con­firm­ing short­com­ings on some han­dling. Out­cry on is­sues—from abort­ed Man­dela Park con­cept to “buss head comin” on­line com­ments re­gard­ing pic­tures of Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters pos­ing with vac­cines yes­ter­day – al­so in­di­cate depth of pub­lic feel­ing, among PNM’s sec­ond-year chal­lenges.

Sec­ond year comes with se­lec­tion of a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er af­ter over 25 peo­ple, in­clud­ing from the TTPS, De­fence Force and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices ap­plied, of­fi­cials con­firmed.

A mixed (and ear­ly) Bud­get 2022 bag of in­creased rev­enue mea­sures and To­ba­go of­fer­ings is ex­pect­ed, en­er­gy sec­tor so­lu­tions to be faced, plus fi­nal­is­ing a re­fin­ery op­er­a­tor by year-end, Car­ni­val 2023 de­ci­sion and 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

Delta de­pend­ing, THA polls by No­vem­ber/ear­ly De­cem­ber tests PNM man­age­ment—af­ter los­ing four seats in Jan­u­ary—now amid in­creased COVID cas­es, need for eco­nom­ic sup­port plus three-way split pos­si­bil­i­ty among the pro­ject­ed 15 seats fol­low­ing ex-PN­Mite Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus’ new par­ty.

To­ba­go PN­Mites yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted chal­lenge “... It’ll be the moth­er of all polls, set­ting gen­er­al elec­tion out­comes.”

UNC, buoyed by ad­di­tion­al Moru­ga seat, has pre­sent­ed call-out and counter to Gov­ern­ment but is yet to en­hance na­tion­al ap­peal. Some front­line changes are ex­pect­ed. UNC launch­es its sec­ond year to­day, ex­pand­ing out­reach with on­line news­pa­per “The Check­list” track­ing Gov­ern­ment.

T&T’s gold­en javelin throw­er Keshorn Wal­cott may not have made it this Olympics. On his Au­gust 11, 2016 vic­to­ry, a proud 73-year-old south­ern­er stood at at­ten­tion in his liv­ing room when T&T’s na­tion­al an­them played for Wal­cott.

There will be oth­er gold­en days for him—and T&T, trust­ing all to hold its sec­ond year steady.