| The dizzying array of Covid-19 data points has fixated onlookers since the virus broke out worldwide last year. Now, as governments learn to live with the virus after vaccination and are starting to see them break the link between cases and deaths, Covid is slowly joining the ranks of diseases we've lived with for years that governments mostly fret about because they fill up hospital beds and challenge the wider resilience of health-care systems. "It's possible we'll get to a stage of only monitoring hospitalizations," says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center, which has built one of the most comprehensive platforms to track the virus and its impact. The U.K. is a case in point. Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week postponed the end of lockdown measures by four weeks to allow more adults to receive a second vaccine dose, which data show significantly increases protection against the new delta variant. Cases of the variant, more transmissible than others, almost doubled in the past week, Public Health England said Friday. Hospitalizations also ticked higher, though the vast majority of the patients haven't been fully vaccinated.  People shop in Bolton as testing and rapid vaccinations continue. Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Europe If hospitalizations maintain controlled, Covid will begin to look less like an unmanageable pandemic, and more like a seasonal disease like influenza. For policymakers, that's the goal. "We are aiming to live with this virus like we do with flu," Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Parliament. In a sign of pandemic optimism—or fatigue—around two dozen U.S. states have reduced how often they release Covid data. Florida now reports just once per week. Epidemiologists are still asking for more regular data than that, but the focus of authorities is shifting. Scientists predict that comparing the prevalence of Covid to the flu, which kills about 650,000 people globally each year, will become an important yardstick for governments come next fall and winter. Covid has killed more than 3.8 million people since the start of 2020, but vaccinated countries should eventually be able to treat its periodic resurgences in the same way as they do the flu—and make policy decisions accordingly. "Comparing to seasonal influenza impact is an appropriate one when talking about things like closing schools," says Nuzzo. "What do we do with influenza? Would we do this in a normal flu season?"—Todd Gillespie | 
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