Should we brace for a second wave of covid-19?

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Epidemiologists are warning it's still too early to let our guard down as they look ahead to the inevitable second wave of COVID-19 and the surge of sickness and death it could bring.

"Until we get the vaccine, I don't think we can really avoid the second wave," said Rama Nair, an expert in epidemiology with 40 years experience as a teacher and researcher at the University of Ottawa.

Nair believes returning too quickly to our pre-COVID-19 lives, when we hugged friends and went hours without washing our hands, could undo the gains we've made in pinning down the novel coronavirus. 

"It's not just going to disappear," Nair said. "We haven't reached anywhere near the herd immunity that we require to avoid a second wave."

Herd immunity is when a sufficiently high proportion of the population is immune to a contagious disease, thus controlling its spread. 

The world’s population is likely still vulnerable to COVID-19. Health officials have said confirmed cases likely represent only a fraction of the actual number of cases, something researchers regard as a dangerous vulnerability. 

But as more and more of us fill sidewalks and parks to resume something resembling our normal lives, more of us will inevitably become infected, and more of us will spread the disease. The key is to keep that new spread under control.

We have to be very careful. This is a tricky virus that has a high ability to spread before you even have symptoms.