More Pfizer needed­ ­–and more education

On Thursday, 75,000 more doses of the Pfizer covid19 vaccine arrived in TT, a gift from the US government.

The US has now sent 684,570 doses to this country as part of its commitment to deliver 400 million doses globally to more than 110 countries.

Chargé d'Affaires Shante Moore of the US Embassy was pleased that 50 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated – while noting the slowdown in the vaccination rate.

"I urge everyone to get vaccinated to help end this pandemic," Mr Moore said.

He did not mention that of the first 600,000 doses sent to TT, 260,000 were unused and will have to be incinerated after they expired on Monday.

Public vaccination was set to resume over the weekend, but it's unclear what the government expects will happen to change the minds of the unvaccinated, or what new and different it plans to do to help change their minds – especially given other changes that might deter them further.

The extensive rollback on restrictions, a decision to move from an official status of “pandemic” to “endemic,” the abandonment of the hotly debated public-sector vaccination plan, increased numbers for public gatherings and full occupancy of public transport sends a signal to the public: that life in TT is returning to a cautious version of normal.

The number of fatalities and hospitalisations have been dropping, and while this is a welcome development, it's also triggered responses like a call from Tobago Chamber president Diane Hadad on Friday to end mask-wearing in public.

Recent public displays of a rejection of covid19 restrictions during Carnival events also encouraged the public to merrily disregard the fundamentals of the pandemic, particularly mask-wearing and social distancing.

There is global exhaustion with the economic, physical and emotional cost of covid19, but endemic status is not a passport to careless behaviour. An endemic disease is still prevalent within a geographic area. Covid19 has not gone away.

Look at other examples: tuberculosis, HIV and malaria are all classified as endemic. They remain deadly, but are managed through existing medical protocols. Covid19 will be no different.

We must accept that there will be continuing measures that need to be taken to limit transmission.

The public cannot assume that omicron will be the last or worst variant and we cannot predict the characteristics of future mutations.

For the nations of Africa, where just eight per cent of the continent's population is fully vaccinated, pandemic status and virus mutation remain a possibility.

Coexistence with covid19 will mean continuing some version of existing protocols on a slow runway to a version of normality that we can live with. But we won't get from pandemic to endemic just by saying so.

That shift, which we can expect to be prolonged and problematic, will be achieved by staying the course of public health protocols, which include vaccination, and maintaining mask-wearing, sanitising and social distancing.