The national government has seen it fit to bring Cebu down to Alert Level 2 for the rest of February.
In line with this, Cebu Province is now mulling lifting the province-wide curfew, while Cebu City has plans to do the same soon when the city celebrates its charter day. It is even set to reopen the Cebu City Sports Center so people can start using it again.
Elsewhere in the province some attractions, like the ones in Badian town, are also expected to reopen to accommodate tourists again.
No doubt this is good news. No one wants to be in the state we are in now and practically everyone wants life to be back to how it was before the pandemic.
But with invigoration must come caution. There is no doubt that the lifting of curfew and the reopening of sites long off-limits to people and locals will lead to the normalization of economic activities. But it also comes with the risk of again spreading the coronavirus.
Over the months, talk about ending the coronavirus has slowly developed into living with it instead. Instead of eradicating it there is now talk about making it endemic; doing the things that allow us to live side-by-side with it like other illnesses that have become common like the cold or the flu. This is actually the best option we have.
This is also something possible if enough people are vaccinated. While people can still catch COVID-19, they will be spared from the worst of its effects because they are vaccinated. There is no need for them to be hospitalized, sparing our healthcare system from being overburdened.
We have mentioned before that we seem to be trapped in endless roller-coaster of ups and downs when it comes to the coronavirus cases. With the alert level classifications being numbers it might even be likened to a repeating countdown; 3-2-1, again, 3-2-1.
With more and more people getting vaccinated we are on track to finally ending this episode that has interrupted two years of our lives and counting. However, it just takes one mistake, one slip-up, one careless moment and it’s back on the roller-coaster or back in the countdown for us.