One person with knowledge of the CDC plans said that the fact that around 500 people are dying every day with Covid is “huge” and does not bode well for any relaxation of restrictions in the near future.

There is some hopefulness among intensive care providers, however.

“There’s definitely something different now,” said Dr. Todd Rice, director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Medical intensive care unit. “We haven’t seen a critical illness from Covid in probably three months.”

Rice and others credit the decrease in people sick enough to be in hospital intensive care units in part to a growing level of population-wide immunity — either from vaccination, infection or both.