By ARITZ PAR­RA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

MADRID (AP) — When the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic was first de­clared, Spaniards were or­dered to stay home for more than three months. For weeks, they were not al­lowed out­side even for ex­er­cise. Chil­dren were banned from play­grounds, and the econ­o­my vir­tu­al­ly stopped.

But of­fi­cials cred­it­ed the dra­con­ian mea­sures with pre­vent­ing a full col­lapse of the health sys­tem. Lives were saved, they ar­gued.

Now, al­most two years lat­er, Spain is prepar­ing to adopt a dif­fer­ent COVID-19 play­book. With one of Eu­rope’s high­est vac­ci­na­tion rates and its most pan­dem­ic-bat­tered economies, the gov­ern­ment is lay­ing the ground­work to treat the next in­fec­tion surge not as an emer­gency but an ill­ness that is here to stay. Sim­i­lar steps are un­der con­sid­er­a­tion in neigh­bor­ing Por­tu­gal and in Britain.

The idea is to move from cri­sis mode to con­trol mode, ap­proach­ing the virus in much the same way coun­tries deal with flu or measles. That means ac­cept­ing that in­fec­tions will oc­cur and pro­vid­ing ex­tra care for at-risk peo­ple and pa­tients with com­pli­ca­tions.

Spain’s cen­tre-left prime min­is­ter, Pe­dro Sánchez, wants the Eu­ro­pean Union to con­sid­er sim­i­lar changes now that the surge of the omi­cron vari­ant has shown that the dis­ease is be­com­ing less lethal.

“What we are say­ing is that in the next few months and years, we are go­ing to have to think, with­out hes­i­tan­cy and ac­cord­ing to what sci­ence tells us, how to man­age the pan­dem­ic with dif­fer­ent pa­ra­me­ters,” he said Mon­day.

FILE - A teacher wearing a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus checks the temperature of her student at Maestro Padilla school as the new school year begins, in Madrid, Sept. 7, 2021. With one of Europe's highest vaccination rates and its most pandemic-battered economies, the Spanish government is laying the groundwork to approach the virus in much the same way countries deal with flu or measles. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)

Sánchez said the changes should not hap­pen be­fore the omi­cron surge is over, but of­fi­cials need to start shap­ing the post-pan­dem­ic world now: “We are do­ing our home­work, an­tic­i­pat­ing sce­nar­ios.”

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has said that it’s too ear­ly to con­sid­er any im­me­di­ate shift. The or­ga­ni­za­tion does not have clear­ly de­fined cri­te­ria for de­clar­ing COVID-19 an en­dem­ic dis­ease, but its ex­perts have pre­vi­ous­ly said that it will hap­pen when the virus is more pre­dictable and there are no sus­tained out­breaks.

“It’s some­what a sub­jec­tive judg­ment be­cause it’s not just about the num­ber of cas­es. It’s about sever­i­ty, and it’s about im­pact,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emer­gen­cies chief.

Speak­ing at a World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum pan­el on Mon­day, Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci, the top in­fec­tious dis­eases doc­tor in the U.S., said COVID-19 could not be con­sid­ered en­dem­ic un­til it drops to “a lev­el that it doesn’t dis­rupt so­ci­ety.”

The Eu­ro­pean Cen­tre for Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol has ad­vised coun­tries to tran­si­tion to more rou­tine han­dling of COVID-19 af­ter the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic is over. The agency said in a state­ment that more EU states in ad­di­tion to Spain will want to adopt “a more long-term, sus­tain­able sur­veil­lance ap­proach.”

Just over 80% of Spain’s pop­u­la­tion has re­ceived two vac­cine dos­es, and au­thor­i­ties are fo­cused on boost­ing the im­mu­ni­ty of adults with third dos­es.

FILE - A nurse prepares vaccines in the Wizink Center, currently used for COVID-19 vaccinations in Madrid, Dec. 1, 2021. With one of Europe's highest vaccination rates and its most pandemic-battered economies, the Spanish government is laying the groundwork to approach the virus in much the same way countries deal with flu or measles. (AP Photo/Paul White, File)

Vac­cine-ac­quired im­mu­ni­ty, cou­pled with wide­spread in­fec­tion, of­fers a chance to con­cen­trate pre­ven­tion ef­forts, test­ing and ill­ness-track­ing re­sources on mod­er­ate- to high-risk groups, said Dr. Sal­vador Trenche, head of the Span­ish So­ci­ety of Fam­i­ly and Com­mu­ni­ty Med­i­cine, which has led the call for a new en­dem­ic re­sponse.

COVID-19 “must be treat­ed like the rest of ill­ness­es,” Trenche told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, adding that “nor­mal­ized at­ten­tion” by health pro­fes­sion­als would help re­duce de­lays in treat­ment of prob­lems not re­lat­ed to the coro­n­avirus.

The pub­lic al­so needs to come to terms with the idea that some deaths from COVID-19 ”will be in­evitable,” Tranche said.

“We can’t do on the sixth wave what we were do­ing on the first one: The mod­el needs to change if we want to achieve dif­fer­ent re­sults,” he said.

The Span­ish Health Min­istry said it was too ear­ly to share any blue­prints be­ing draft­ed by its ex­perts and ad­vis­ers, but the agency con­firmed that one pro­pos­al is to fol­low an ex­ist­ing mod­el of “sen­tinel sur­veil­lance” cur­rent­ly used in the EU for mon­i­tor­ing flu.

The strat­e­gy has been nick­named “flu-iza­tion” of COVID-19 by Span­ish me­dia, al­though of­fi­cials say that the sys­tems for in­fluen­za will need to be adapt­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the coro­n­avirus.

For now, the dis­cus­sion about mov­ing to an en­dem­ic ap­proach is lim­it­ed to wealthy na­tions that can af­ford to speak about the worst of the pan­dem­ic in the past tense. Their ac­cess to vac­cines and ro­bust pub­lic health sys­tems are the en­vy of the de­vel­op­ing world.

It’s al­so not clear how an en­dem­ic strat­e­gy would co­ex­ist with the “ze­ro-Covid” ap­proach adopt­ed by Chi­na and oth­er Asian coun­tries, and how would that af­fect in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el.

Many coun­tries over­whelmed by the record num­ber of omi­cron cas­es are al­ready giv­ing up on mas­sive test­ing and cut­ting quar­an­tine times, es­pe­cial­ly for work­ers who show no more than cold-like symp­toms. Since the be­gin­ning of the year, class­es in Span­ish schools stop on­ly if ma­jor out­breaks oc­cur, not with the first re­port­ed case as they used to.

In Por­tu­gal, with one of the world’s high­est vac­ci­na­tion rates, Pres­i­dent Marce­lo Re­be­lo de Sousa de­clared in a New Year’s speech that the coun­try had “moved in­to an en­dem­ic phase.” But the de­bate over spe­cif­ic mea­sures pe­tered out as the spread soon ac­cel­er­at­ed to record lev­els — al­most 44,000 new cas­es in 24 hours re­port­ed Tues­day.

How­ev­er, hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions and deaths in the vac­ci­nat­ed world are pro­por­tion­al­ly much low­er than in pre­vi­ous surges.

FILE - A young woman wearing a face mask looks at her phone on a subway train in Lisbon, Jan. 6, 2022. With one of Europe's highest vaccination rates and its most pandemic-battered economies, the Spanish government is laying the groundwork to approach the virus in much the same way countries deal with flu or measles. Similar steps are under consideration in Portugal and the United Kingdom, whose government says that the omicron wave has peaked. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)

In the Unit­ed King­dom, mask-wear­ing in pub­lic places and COVID-19 pass­ports will be dropped on Jan. 26, Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son an­nounced Wednes­day say­ing that the lat­est wave had “peaked na­tion­al­ly.”

The re­quire­ment for in­fect­ed peo­ple to iso­late for five full days re­mains in place, but John­son said he will seek to scrap it in com­ing weeks if the virus da­ta con­tin­ues to im­prove. Of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics put at 95% the share of the British pop­u­la­tion that has de­vel­oped an­ti­bod­ies against COVID-19 ei­ther from in­fec­tion or vac­ci­na­tion.

“As COVID be­comes en­dem­ic, we will need to re­place le­gal re­quire­ments with ad­vice and guid­ance, urg­ing peo­ple with the virus to be care­ful and con­sid­er­ate of oth­ers,” John­son said.

For some oth­er Eu­ro­pean gov­ern­ments, the idea of nor­mal­iz­ing COVID-19 is at odds with their ef­forts to boost vac­ci­na­tion among re­luc­tant groups.

In Ger­many, where less than 73% of the pop­u­la­tion has re­ceived two dos­es and in­fec­tion rates are hit­ting new records al­most dai­ly, com­par­isons to Spain or any oth­er coun­try are be­ing re­ject­ed.

“We still have too many un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly among our old­er cit­i­zens,” Health Min­istry spokesman An­dreas Deffn­er said Mon­day.

Italy is ex­tend­ing its vac­ci­na­tion man­date to all cit­i­zens aged 50 years or old­er and im­pos­ing fines of up to 1,500 eu­ros for un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple who show up at work. Ital­ians are al­so re­quired to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed to ac­cess pub­lic trans­porta­tion, planes, gyms, ho­tels and trade fairs.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Maria Cheng, Dan­i­ca Kir­ka and Sylvia Hui in Lon­don, Raf Casert in Brus­sels, Colleen Bar­ry in Mi­lan, Italy, and Geir Moul­son in Berlin con­tributed to this re­port.