The attempt to balance growing confidence and lingering caution on Covid illustrates the sense inside the White House that they must chart a delicate path out of the crisis — and the reality that after a year of politically painful fits and starts, Biden can ill afford another setback.

In internal administration meetings to discuss the speech, senior health officials repeatedly warned White House aides against ever declaring the pandemic to be “over,” citing the possibility of new variants and the likelihood of future outbreaks among the unvaccinated, two of the people familiar with the planning said.

Those health officials have also argued that the administration needs to show Americans that it has a clear and detailed plan for restoring normalcy as well as a plan for when the next biomedical threat emerges — a process that is still under development.

Biden, for his part, is determined to avoid a repeat of his decision last July to celebrate “independence from the virus,” only to watch the U.S. get hit with the lethal Delta surge weeks later, according to two of the people familiar with the planning.