But infectious disease experts aren’t quite ready to declare that it’s safe for individuals, rather than governments and health officials, to determine whether precautions such as masking indoors are necessary.

“I think it’s probably reasonable not to get too cocky at this point,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “I welcome the decline in cases that we are seeing in the US and a number of other countries, and I think you can both celebrate the sunshine while also keeping an umbrella close by for the possibility that rain could occur.”…

But Justin Lessler, an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina, says that while the numbers of Covid cases, deaths and hospitalizations have recently plummeted, the fact that the Omicron spike was so much higher than previous waves has misled people into thinking that they no longer need to wear masks or avoid mass gatherings. The US daily average of cases and hospitalizations on 16 February were about 124,000 and 81,000, according to the Times.

Before removing precautions, Lessler said he would like to see Covid levels like late June 2021 – before the Delta wave – when the daily averages of new cases and hospitalizations were about 12,000 and 16,000.