The Island is waking up early this year. A streak of splendid weather — most unusual for March — has lured folks out of their homes and created an almost giddy anticipation for the approaching season.

On April Fool’s day, shoppers were lined up before 9 a.m. for the reopening of Morning Glory Farm. A traffic jam on the Vineyard Haven road presaged the Triangle tie-ups of mid-summer.

After a year of forced isolation, the eagerness for freedom and social contact is understandable and hard to contain.

But this is still a dangerous time, as evidenced by a recent spike in Covid-19 cases after a two- month lull. Following weeks that saw new cases in the single digits, the Island Boards of Health reported 47 new positive tests for the coronavirus in a week, putting the three down-Island towns back into the red zone again for risk of infection.

And while 5,000 people have now been fully vaccinated against the virus on the Island, the process of inoculating the rest of the population has slowed to a dribble, causing anger and impatience. While the hospital is geared up to vaccinate as many as 1,000 people a day, only 60 first dose vaccines were administered Monday. Hospital officials say a critical lack of supply is the cause.

What will this summer look like on Martha’s Vineyard? No one has the full answer yet.

Two early-season celebrations, the Taste of the Vineyard and the Best of the Vineyard, have been shelved for another year, as has the Beach Road festival. The West Tisbury Farmers’ Market will once again be held on the grounds of the Ag Hall with strict social distancing. The town of Edgartown is planning to open areas for outdoor dining once again. The summer’s capstone event, the Ag Fair, is still on the calendar for late August, but — for the moment at least — state guidelines still limit outdoor events in Massachusetts to 150 people.

Meanwhile, Steamship Authority data suggest that the crowds are coming. Advance reservations for July are ahead of two years ago and August reservations are also closing in on pre-pandemic levels.

How well the Island weathers this latest spate of Covid cases will tell us a lot about how the summer may unfold.

As daffodils and crocuses emerge from their winter sleep, the temptation is greater than ever to break out of the constricting routines that the pandemic forced upon us. But continued caution and care are essential right now if we hope to enjoy a successful summer.