Just when the country started retracing its steps out of the woods of COVID-19, the case counts have started swelling again, raising red flags of a possible second wave of the pandemic, if care is not taken.

Yesterday, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) reported on its portal that as of October 29, this year, 76 new infections had been recorded, increasing the active cases to 620 and confirmed cases to 48,200.

The update also indicated that three people were in critical condition, eight in severe conditions, 320 had died while 47,260 had recovered since the outbreak of the virus in March this year.

A few weeks ago, the country’s figure was hovering around 300, giving us hope that we had done something right to combat the virus that sent the world on its knees.

So what went wrong? We failed ourselves when we decided to throw caution to the wind and disregard COVID-19 protocols at political events, in the markets, on public transport and diverse places of gathering.

Indeed, the moment some restrictions were eased, we resumed our old lifestyle, dumping the new normal such as vigorously washing our hands in the heat of the pandemic and we are doing this like the way we discard using nose masks.

The guiltiest group of people now is the political parties and their supporters, who have been attending rallies and keep-fit exercises without nose masks and social distancing.

Sadly, the political leaders, who should know better, are more concerned with the euphoria which greats them during their campaigns than the lives of their supporters, forgetting that if they got infected and died, their votes would go along with them.

We cannot afford to relax and we definitely cannot let our guards down because according to health experts like Dr. Da Costa Aboagye, the Director of Health Promotion Division of the GHS, a second wave of the virus would be deadlier.

According to Dr. Aboagye, who is also the Leader of Risk Communication for COVID-19, adherence to the protocols is the safest way to combat the virus in the absence of a vaccine and cure.

The Ghanaian Times advises Ghanaians not to be complacent by the fact that Africa, and for that matter Ghana, did not suffer severe health impact of the virus as projected by global health experts.

This is because no scientific basis has been established for the low infection rate.

We should be guided by the fact that Canada, for instance, which was down to low double digits in its daily new infections at one point, now records about 3,000 new infections per day.

Even in the EU, which had a strong first response to the pandemic, has seen the number of cases rising to hundreds a day since the beginning of October while some countries like England, France, Germany and Belgium have or are reconsidering new national restrictions.

At the onset of the pandemic, the mantra was “Spread calm, not fear” but it appears that we have become too calm to the extent that we have forgotten how fearful the virus really is.

We should fear the second wave and embrace the protocols for our own safety.