#BTEditorial – The choice is ours alone to stem COVID’s tide

A year and a half since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Barbados is nowhere out of the woods.

And the daily figures of new infections and deaths indicate it will require relentless national effort to break the grip of this deadly virus.

The troubling reality comes as the year rapidly winds down with upcoming celebrations of Independence and Christmas and the desire to put what has been a tough year behind us. To mingle and live a little after enduring necessary but uncomfortable restrictions is the natural inclination.

We’ve watched quarantine turn into shutdown and then curfew and we all desperately want this pandemic to end.

Most of us have welcomed the vaccines and have taken the jab and now many are getting their boosters in the hope that life will return to normalcy.

But vaccines alone aren’t enough, especially when not enough of the population has been vaccinated. We all have to do our part to turn the tide.

Therefore, any celebrations will have to be balanced with common sense and caution.

Today’s figures were just another dose of reality, 290 positive cases – 128 males and 162 females. There are 682 people in isolation facilities and 7,429 in home isolation — that’s more than 8, 000 active cases that we know of.

On Monday, COVID-19 advisor David Ellis warned against throwing caution to the wind and called for greater personal responsibility with the Delta variant now raging.

Ellis was at pains to point out that while some appear to think that the uptick in tourists visiting the island was driving the current outbreak, citizens must keep their guard up.

He said: “We need to continue to push the concept of personal responsibility and recognize that whether you have an increase in visitors or not, because of the community spread that we have had in the country, because we have so many people in isolation which means that we have so many active cases, it requires that we exercise great caution.

“There is a danger in just looking at this from the point of view of the visitors coming into Barbados… whether the visitors come out or not, Barbados has to pay attention to surveillance.”

This has been repeatedly echoed by our health officials. It is critical that we all continue to do our part in keeping ourselves, family, friends and community safe. Vigilance must ever be our watchword.

Yet, with the warnings and the clear evidence, some among us are not paying heed, putting themselves at risk and worst their families, friends and work colleagues.

Virtually every day there are videos and pictures making the rounds on social media of crowds of people at various liming spots, with little to no social distancing, little to incorrect mask-wearing.

Ellis noted that a lingering concern was the behaviour in local bars.

He said: “There is a lot of talk. People come to me all the time expressing deep concern about what happens at bars, and that’s a pretty interesting one because you know once people get some liquor in their head, they can throw all caution to the wind,” said Ellis. “Get too close to each other, you can’t drink with a mask on; when you are eating you can’t eat with the mask on, and therefore perhaps there is a need for a lot more reinforcement in those places.”

It’s no secret that during this pandemic, gatherings of people who failed to stick to the proven protocols have led to increases in cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

While it may be tempting to ease up following the protocols within your “closed” bubble of friends, think again. COVID-19 is no respecter of persons and it does not excuse anyone from dropping their guard no matter how safe you think your bubble is.

We need to avoid this kind of risky behaviour over the next few weeks, and that starts with every individual assessing the risk, and then opting to stay safe by wearing masks, sanitizing their hands and maintaining a safe physical distance.

Failure to heed these simple measures provides the perfect bed for COVID to stick around and the longer COVID-19 sticks around, the more people it infects, the more likely it is to mutate into new variants.

The choice is stark but fair. We have come too far before we can let down our masks.