Strapped for workers amid the omicron surge, some employers, especially in the battered health care sector, are trying to cope by relaxing COVID-19 safety measures—with some bringing employees back to work even if they test positive for the virus.

Those moves—fueled by new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and early reports that omicron causes milder symptoms that previous COVID variants—could signal a turning point in how employers deal with COVID safety moving forward, employment lawyers say—especially if employers continue to wrestle with both worker scarcity and surges in consumer demand.