Companies looking for an official rule book on pandemic precautions will be disappointed. The Biden administration’s nationwide coronavirus vaccine mandate has been overturned. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing criticism for its shifting guidance on isolation times. And just as cases surge to record levels, tests are scarce — and may not always be effective.

As the federal government’s efforts to contain the coronavirus hit their limits — as the administration itself admits — employers are largely on their own.

Business leaders must decide whether and how to use tools such as their own vaccine mandates, masking, distancing, and testing at their offices and other work sites. And more fundamentally, they must decide what kind of company they want to run: one that manages cases or one that manages risk.

Managing cases, with a goal of avoiding all infections at the workplace, has been the approach of many companies thus far. This zero-Covid strategy treats the pandemic as an acute, emergency situation that requires upending business as usual. That might mean telling employees to work remotely indefinitely, with strict rules for those who come into the office.

But some experts believe that the Omicron surge could peak this month. That could allow for a relatively safe return to workplaces as soon as February, given the bolstered immunity of the millions who have been vaccinated and recovered from infections. (It may not work out that way, of course: An alternative pandemic path is “it gets worse,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and a former White House adviser, “which would be a disaster.”)

If the optimistic forecast pans out, it will make managing risk — not cases — a more viable option for employers who want to bring employees physically back together. Managing risk would require investment in a “new normal” of living with the virus for a long time, echoing a national strategy that a group of former White House health advisers, including Dr. Emanuel, recently recommended to the Biden administration.

What does running a business mean if you’re expecting Covid to be forever?

“You run it like you’re running it with a flu,” Dr. Emanuel said — but with some improvements.

How to live (and work) with Covid

Living with Covid does not mean ignoring Covid. It means working to prevent the worst outcomes.

Vaccines reduce deaths and hospitalizations. And though some states, like Florida and Montana, have passed laws restricting employer vaccine mandates, experts say requiring employees to be vaccinated is one of the most effective ways businesses can create a safer workplace.

United Airlines said this week that it had gone eight straight weeks without Covid-related deaths among its vaccinated employees, despite the surging Omicron variant of the virus. Before its mandate, it averaged one death per week.

Booster shots are essential to boosting immunity — even if the C.D.C. does not update its definition of fully vaccinated beyond two doses of an mRNA vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Some companies already require boosters for office entry, like Facebook’s parent, Meta, and Blackstone.

Beyond vaccinations, health experts say that investing in upgraded ventilation is one of the most important things that companies can do to prevent airborne illnesses — whether Covid or the flu.

Paid sick leave to allow for sufficient isolation time will continue to be vital. Ideally, companies would provide up to 10 days of paid sick leave, with more available if a state or national public-health emergency is declared, said David Michaels, an epidemiologist and a former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. With Covid, the best isolation policy for most workers would allow them to return to the office after five days as long as they had a negative result on a rapid test and continued to wear a mask through Day 10, Dr. Michaels said.

Once the Omicron surge abates, other guardrails may become less necessary.

“If you’ve mandated vaccines, encourage boosters, have good ventilation and filtration — amazing, you’ve done what you need to do to prevent the worst outcomes,” said Joseph Allen, a professor of public health at Harvard who advises companies on their Covid policies

It is then “reasonable,” he believes, to say: “We are not going to de-densify. We’re not going to keep stickers on the ground before you get in the elevator. We’re not going to have you wear a mask all day, every day.”

Frequent testing during the Omicron surge is essential to understanding its scope and controlling its spread, but such testing is unlikely to be necessary in the future, Dr. Allen said. He envisions employers eventually using tests only when workers have symptoms or want to return after being infected.

The fallout

Managing Covid is politically fraught. There is likely to be backlash if companies change course.

It’s easiest to live with Covid if you have fundamental protections like a vaccine mandate in place. Those may be harder to put into effect in industries struggling with labor shortages and in places where local regulations discourage them.

Some employees may simply not want to return — and maybe you can’t make them. “Employees are stressed, more so than they’ve ever been in the past,” said Vaile Wright, a clinical psychologist and senior director at the American Psychological Association. “They are willing to leave jobs if it does not serve their needs.”

Approaches to returning to a normal workplace that manage risk — instead of trying to eliminate all cases — do not always take into account economic and health inequities. Immunocompromised employees may decide they do not feel comfortable in an office without a mandatory mask policy, which may put them more at risk than their colleagues.

And company leadership, employees, unions and other stakeholders may not all agree.

In December, Delta Air Lines updated its policies on isolation almost immediately after the C.D.C. reduced its recommendation to five days, from 10. A fight over the policy between the airline and the Association of Flight Attendants-C.W.A. — which is trying to unionize the airline — has resulted in a cease-and-desist order.

For some, these trade-offs may not be worth it. Primarily digital companies like Robinhood, which recently told employees that they can work for home forever, can easily work remotely, while those like General Motors do not have that choice. A broad spectrum of strategies is inevitable.

Over the past several months, executives have asked the Biden administration for clarity on the goal for managing Covid. Now, it’s time for companies to set their own.

What do you think? Will companies soon treat Covid more like the flu? What will the “new normal” at workplaces look like when they fully reopen? Let us know: dealbook@nytimes.com.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The day Kea Sokun was arrested in Cambodia, four men in plainclothes showed up at his photography shop near Angkor Wat and carted him off to the police station. Mr. Kea Sokun, who is also a popular rapper, had released two songs on YouTube, and the men said they needed to know why he’d written them.

“They kept asking me: ‘Who is behind you? What party do you vote for?’” Mr. Kea Sokun said. “I told them, ‘I have never even voted, and no one controls me.’”

The 23-year-old artist, who says his songs are about everyday struggles in Cambodia, was sentenced to 18 months in an overcrowded prison after a judge found him guilty of inciting social unrest with his lyrics. His case is part of a crackdown in which dozens have been sent to jail for posting jokes, poems, pictures, private messages and songs on the internet.

The ramped-up scrutiny reflects an increasingly restrictive digital environment in Cambodia, where a new law will allow the authorities to monitor all web traffic in the country. Critics say that the decree puts Cambodia on a growing list of countries that have embraced China’s authoritarian model of internet surveillance, from Vietnam to Turkey, and that it will deepen the clash over the future of the web.

Cambodia’s National Internet Gateway, set to begin operating on Feb. 16, will send all internet traffic — including from abroad — through a government-run portal. The gateway, which is mandatory for all service providers, gives state regulators the means to “prevent and disconnect all network connections that affect national income, security, social order, morality, culture, traditions and customs.”

Government surveillance is already high in Cambodia. Each ministry has a team that monitors the internet. Offending content is reported to an internet crime unit in the Ministry of Interior, the center of the country’s robust security apparatus. Those responsible can be charged with incitement and sent to prison.

But rights groups say that the new law will make it even easier for the authorities to monitor and punish online content, and that the recent arrests are meant to further intimidate citizens into self-censorship in a country where free speech is enshrined in the Constitution.

“The authorities are emboldened by China as an example of an authoritarian state that gives Cambodia political cover, new technology and financial resources,” said Sophal Ear, a dean at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University whose family escaped the Khmer Rouge, the murderous regime that seized power in Cambodia in 1975.

“The National Internet Gateway is merely centralizing what has been a decentralized system of control over Cambodia’s internet,” he said. “The outcome will be to crush what little remains of freedom of expression online.”

The Cambodian authorities have defended the decree as essential for peace and security, dismissing allegations of censorship or any notion that freedom of speech is under threat. “There is a free press in Cambodia and freedom on the internet,” said Phay Siphan, the chief government spokesman. “We encourage people to use the internet, up until it becomes incitement.”

Mr. Phay Siphan accused rights groups of “spreading paranoia” and described United Nations experts who have criticized the law as “working part-time jobs.” He said he felt sorry for the young people who had been arrested because they were not speaking for themselves.

“With freedom comes responsibility,” he said. “We warn them. We lecture them, make them sign documents, then the next week they post the same things, without taking the responsibility to maintain peace and stability.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1985 and shown great zeal when publicly condemning his political rivals, appears eager to transfer his opprobrium to the digital era.

When a former monk and activist posted a disparaging poem about the loss of the nation’s forests on the prime minister’s Facebook page, Mr. Hun Sen described the act as “extremist” and ordered the police to hunt the monk down. He was arrested in October.

In August, a former agriculture professor was sentenced to 18 months in prison for making jokes on Facebook about requiring chickens to wear anti-Covid masks. He was charged with incitement and with defaming the prime minister, as well as the minister of agriculture.

Weeks later, a farmer, frustrated by the government’s failed promise to subsidize longan crops while the pandemic kept borders closed to exports, posted a video of tons of his annual harvest going to rot. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Of more than 30 arrests made over digital content since 2020, the most publicized one involved an autistic 16-year-old who was released in November. The teenager, Kak Sovann Chhay, had been jailed for comments he made in a chat group on Telegram, the private messaging app.

His father, a senior member of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, which has been outlawed, was in prison at the same time. He had been jailed in 2020 for criticizing Mr. Hun Sen on Facebook, where the prime minister has more than 13 million followers.

Internet service providers have asked the authorities to provide more clarity about the gateway. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in a statement that it had “joined with other stakeholders in sharing our feedback on this new law with the Cambodian government, and expressing our strong support for a free and open internet.”

Last week, three local journalists were charged and detained for incitement over a report on a land dispute that they posted on Facebook.

“We’re 35 days away from D-Day, and no status update has been delivered by relevant authorities or the private sector itself. That said, we weren’t expecting any public transparency as to the implementation of this,” Naly Pilorge, director of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, said this month.

“In the past, the government has tried to block content by requesting private-sector I.S.P.s to remove it, with mixed success,” she said. “But the National Internet Gateway gives them a much more powerful tool to crack down on free expression and dissent.”

In one bizarre move in September, the prime minister “Zoom-bombed” an online meeting for members of the Cambodian National Rescue Party. He took to Facebook to explain the intrusion: “This entry was just to give a warning message to the rebel group to be aware that Mr. Hun Sen’s people are everywhere.”

San Mala, a senior advocacy officer with the Cambodian Youth Network, said activists and rights groups were already using coded language to communicate across online messaging platforms, knowing that the authorities had been emboldened by the decree.

“As a civil society organization, we are concerned about this internet gateway law because we fear that our work will be subjected to surveillance or our conversations will be eavesdropped on or they will be able to attend online meetings with us without invitation or permission,” said Mr. San Mala, 28.

Sopheap Chak, the executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the timing of the new law was unsettling, given upcoming elections.

“There is a real risk that the National Internet Gateway will be used to block and censor dissenting opinions online,” she said. “This will hinder Cambodian citizens’ ability to make an informed decision on which candidate they deem to be the fittest to rule the country.”

Mr. Kea Sokun, the rapper, was released in October after serving 12 months in prison. Six months of his original 18-month sentence were suspended to keep him in line, he said, a reminder that he is “not legally free yet.”

“Khmer Land,” one of the songs that got him arrested, now has more than 4.4 million views on YouTube, and Mr. Kea Sokun is already working on his next album.

“I’m not angry, but I know what happened to me is unfair,” he said. “The government made an example out of me to scare people who talk about social issues.” He said he could have had his sentence reduced if he had apologized, but he refused.

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” Mr. Kea Sokun said, “and I never will.”

Soth Ban and Meas Molika contributed reporting.