With new plans and guidance from state and federal officials and COVID-19 cases way down from the peak in late January, it’s starting to feel like this pandemic has turned the corner. Finally.

Last Friday, Gov. Jared Polis and his public health team unveiled Colorado’s plan to deal with the ongoing presence of COVID-19 in the state, according to reporting by The Daily Sentinel’s Charles Ashby.

The plan includes shifting coronavirus care to traditional medical settings and expanding the healthcare workforce to ensure it has enough capacity in case a new variant emerges and cases surge again.

The governor also had a message to Coloradans who are fully vaccinated: it’s time to get back to normal.

“Fully vaccinated Coloradans can rest assured that you are reasonably safe to live your normal pre-pandemic life,” the governor said in a written statement.

We think the plan and the message from the governor make a lot of sense. With the omicron-driven spike in cases we saw earlier this year waning and positivity rates plummeting, it seems reasonable to update the plan to shift the response from an emergency to a normal healthcare issue.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 is still in our community. While cases and hospitalizations are down dramatically, we still have the virus here. However, thanks to vaccinations and natural immunity from having caught the virus, fewer people will get seriously ill.

Rather than needing a state-wide emergency response, we can start treating the coronavirus like we do other viruses and illnesses.

Still, that doesn’t mean this pandemic can’t get bad again. That’s why we need to expand our healthcare workforce and have the necessary tools to fight back. Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 incident commander, said Colorado will be prepared.

“If the moment requires us to surge, we will have contracts in place so that we can scale mass testing again,” he said. “We will be prepared to do a mass vaccination campaign again if it is required. And we will continue to partner with our emergency management professionals to ensure that we have a modern and up-to-date (personal protective equipment) store.”

That’s reassuring to hear. What this pandemic showed is that Colorado, like every other state, was not truly prepared for a pandemic. That’s one of the reasons we had to have the initial lockdown. We expect the governor to implement this plan so that doesn’t have to happen again.

Around the same time as the Governor’s announcement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its mask guidance to have less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening at hospitals, according to The Associated Press.

This is also the right move at this point in the pandemic. We need to ensure hospitals can still function and have enough beds to handle all cases, but if that isn’t an issue, then mask mandates aren’t necessary.

Between the pleasant weather this week and the positive pandemic news, it seems the dark pandemic winter is thawing into spring.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorial board