By GILLIAN FLAC­CUS, CHRISTO­PHER WE­BER and TER­RY TANG-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

PORT­LAND, Ore. (AP) — With COVID-19 case num­bers plum­met­ing, Emi­ly Safrin did some­thing she hadn’t done since the pan­dem­ic be­gan two years ago: She put her fears aside and went to a con­cert.

The ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed restau­rant serv­er planned to keep her mask on, but as the reg­gae­ton star Bad Bun­ny took the stage and the en­er­gy in the crowd soared, she ripped it off. Soon af­ter, she was strolling un­masked in a trendy Port­land neigh­bor­hood with friends.

Two years af­ter the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­clared COVID-19 a pan­dem­ic, chang­ing the world overnight, re­lief and hope are creep­ing back in af­ter a long, dark pe­ri­od of loss, fear and deep un­cer­tain­ty about the fu­ture.

“Every­one was sup­posed to be vac­ci­nat­ed or have a neg­a­tive test, and I said, ‘What the heck, I’m just gonna live my life,’” Safrin said of her con­cert ex­pe­ri­ence. “It was over­whelm­ing, to be hon­est, but it al­so felt great to be able to just feel a lit­tle bit nor­mal again.”

The world is fi­nal­ly emerg­ing from a bru­tal stretch of win­ter dom­i­nat­ed by the high­ly con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant, bring­ing a sense of re­lief on the two-year an­niver­sary of the start of the pan­dem­ic.

It was March 11, 2020 when the WHO is­sued its de­c­la­ra­tion, dri­ving home the sever­i­ty of the threat faced by a virus that at that point had wreaked hav­oc pri­mar­i­ly in Italy and Chi­na. The U.S. had 38 con­firmed coro­n­avirus deaths and 1,300 cas­es na­tion­wide on that date, but re­al­i­ty was start­ing to sink in: stocks tanked, class­rooms start­ed clos­ing and peo­ple be­gan don­ning masks. In a mat­ter of hours, the NBA was can­cel­ing games, Chica­go’s huge St. Patrick’s Day pa­rade was scut­tled and late-night co­me­di­ans be­gan film­ing from emp­ty stu­dios — or even their homes.

Since then, more than 6 mil­lion peo­ple have died glob­al­ly, near­ly 1 mil­lion in the U.S. Mil­lions have been thrown out of work, stu­dents have en­dured three school years of dis­rup­tions. The emer­gence of the vac­cine in De­cem­ber 2021 saved count­less lives but po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions, hes­i­tan­cy and in­equal­i­ty in health sys­tems have kept mil­lions of peo­ple around the world from get­ting in­oc­u­lat­ed, pro­long­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The sit­u­a­tion is im­prov­ing, how­ev­er.

Hos­pi­tal­iza­tions of peo­ple with COVID-19 have plum­met­ed 80% in the last six weeks across the U.S. since a mid-Jan­u­ary pan­dem­ic peak, drop­ping to the low­est lev­els since Ju­ly 2021, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. Case counts have fol­lowed the same trend line to the low­est counts since last sum­mer as well. Even the death tal­ly, which typ­i­cal­ly lags be­hind cas­es and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, has slowed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the last month.

In its lat­est pan­dem­ic re­port, the WHO said in­fec­tions and deaths are down across the globe, with on­ly one re­gion — the West­ern Pa­cif­ic — see­ing a rise in cas­es. The Mid­dle East and Africa saw cas­es drop by 46% and 40%, re­spec­tive­ly.

An­oth­er pos­i­tive: The omi­cron wave and vac­ci­na­tions have left enough peo­ple with pro­tec­tion against the coro­n­avirus that fu­ture spikes will like­ly re­quire much less dis­rup­tion to so­ci­ety, ex­perts say.

Nowhere is the shift in the pan­dem­ic more ap­par­ent than in the na­tion’s hos­pi­tals, where crit­i­cal care units were over­flow­ing with des­per­ate­ly ill pa­tients just months ago.

Julie Kim, chief nurs­ing of­fi­cer at Prov­i­dence St. Jude Med­ical Cen­ter in Fuller­ton, Cal­i­for­nia, gets emo­tion­al when she re­calls the bleak­est days of the pan­dem­ic when doc­tors and nurs­es worked around the clock and didn’t go home be­cause they were afraid of bring­ing the virus back with them.

At one point dur­ing the sum­mer 2020 spike, there were 250 COVID-19 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal li­censed for 320 beds and the hos­pi­tal had to use of­fices for over­flow bed space.

The pan­dem­ic has eased to the point that as of Tues­day, there were just four COVID-19 pa­tients at the hos­pi­tal, Kim said, and med­ical staff feels more pre­pared to treat the dis­ease with the knowl­edge gained in those dark­est days. Still, many are trau­ma­tized by the raw mem­o­ries of the past two years and will nev­er be the same, she said.

“It’s hard to use the word ‘nor­mal,’ be­cause I don’t think we will ever get back to a pre-COVID state. We are adapt­ing and we are mov­ing for­ward,” Kim said. “This has had a toll on many of us. Some peo­ple are mov­ing for­ward and some peo­ple are still hav­ing a hard time deal­ing with it all.”

Mask man­dates, vac­cine re­quire­ments and oth­er COVID-19 mea­sures are be­ing elim­i­nat­ed every­where. The last statewide mask man­date in the U.S., in Hawaii, will end in two weeks.

But health ex­perts are al­so urg­ing some cau­tion.

Dr. Al­bert Ko, an in­fec­tious-dis­ease physi­cian and epi­demi­ol­o­gist at the Yale School of Pub­lic Health, said it’s cer­tain­ly good news that the U.S. seems to be at the tail end of a peak. But he cau­tioned against any vic­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tions, es­pe­cial­ly with the po­ten­tial of an­oth­er vari­ant lurk­ing around the cor­ner.

“We have new vari­ants emerge and those new vari­ants fu­el large waves, epi­dem­ic waves,” Ko said. “The big ques­tion is, are they go­ing to be as mild or less se­vere as omi­cron? Are they go­ing to be po­ten­tial­ly more se­vere? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I can’t pre­dict that.”

In Port­land, peo­ple are head­ing back to movie the­aters, con­certs and gyms af­ter a long, dark win­ter and bars and restau­rants are fill­ing up once more. Safrin said many cus­tomers are telling her it’s their first time din­ing in­side in months.

Kalani Pa, who owns an Any­time Fit­ness fran­chise with his wife in the Port­land sub­urbs, said the past two years al­most drove him out of busi­ness — but with Ore­gon’s mask man­date end­ing Fri­day, his small gym is sud­den­ly com­ing to life again. The fran­chise signed three new mem­bers on one day alone this week and a cof­fee shop opened this week next to the gym in a space that sat va­cant for months, dri­ving up foot traf­fic.

“Some­times things have got to get worse be­fore they get bet­ter,” Pa said be­fore rush­ing off to give a tour to a new mem­ber.

De­mand for test­ing is down, too.

Ja­clyn Chavi­ra re­mem­bers the fear on peo­ples’ faces as they lined up by the thou­sands in Los An­ge­les to be test­ed dur­ing the late 2020 surge, which trig­gered an as­ton­ish­ing 250,000 in­fec­tions and more than 3,000 deaths a day across the U.S. at the peak.

In­fec­tions raced out of con­trol for weeks and some days the line of cars at the Dodger Sta­di­um test site, one of the largest in the na­tion, stretched for near­ly two miles.

At the height of the omi­cron surge, Chavi­ra’s non­prof­it called CORE did 94,000 tests a week at 10 sites in Los An­ge­les Coun­ty. Last week, they con­duct­ed about 3,400 and most of them were for work or trav­el re­quire­ments — not be­cause the per­son was sick, she said.

“You can sense the re­lief,” said Chavi­ra.

Not every­one, how­ev­er, is ready to dive back in. Many re­mem­ber last year when mask rules eased and COVID-19 seemed to be loos­en­ing its grip on­ly to come roar­ing back as the delta and omi­cron vari­ants took hold.

Am­ber Pierce, who works in a Port­land bar-restau­rant, was out of work for al­most a year due to COVID-re­lat­ed lay­offs and nar­row­ly dodged an in­fec­tion her­self when the virus swept through her work­place. A reg­u­lar cus­tomer died dur­ing this win­ter’s peak, she said.

She still wears a mask even when out­doors and was eat­ing piz­za out­side on a re­cent day on­ly be­cause her broth­er was vis­it­ing for the first time in more than a year.

“I’m go­ing to make sure that there’s not a spike once those masks come off and every­one starts, you know, feel­ing com­fort­able,” she said, as she ap­plied hand san­i­tiz­er.

“It’s still the anx­i­ety of it,” she said. “Ei­ther way, it’s go­ing to hit you whether you get re­al­ly sick or not.”

Tang re­port­ed from Phoenix, Ari­zona. We­ber re­port­ed from Los An­ge­les.