California has laid out a plan that treats Covid as a permanent aspect of life, anticipating future outbreaks and new variants that may require temporary public health measures, such as wearing masks, depending on how much the virus disrupts economic and social activities, CNBC reported.

Governor Gavin Newsom said California is abandoning the crisis mentality that has characterized the response to the pandemic over the past two years. Newsom said the Golden State must learn to live with the virus by preparing as much as possible for an uncertain future using the tools developed over the past two years.

“We have all come to understand what was not understood at the beginning of this crisis — that there is no end date, that there is not a moment where we declare victory,” Newsom said during a press conference Thursday.

California’s response plan aims to use wastewater surveillance to detect rising viral transmission early, so the state can rapidly identify new variants as they emerge and determine within 45 days if vaccines, tests and therapeutics are effective against the strain. The state would then quickly deploy additional testing and health-care staff to regions impacted by rising transmission, according to the plan.

Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the state’s response will depend on the dominant Covid variant circulating at any given time, how much disease the variant is causing, and how many people are hospitalized by the strain.

California is likely to experience seasonal spikes in Covid in the fall and winter, he said, and the state will closely monitor whether those spikes are caused by new variants of concern or familiar ones.

California plans to increase its medical staff by 3,000 for three weeks if needed during an outbreak. The state will also retain the ability to run at least 500,000 tests daily for Covid. According to Ghaly, California will stockpile 75 million high-quality masks, thousands of ventilator machines and procure an additional 30 million over-the-counter Covid tests.