The return to schools in Wales and England next week will allow more parents to go back to work but many will continue working from home.
As with the schools reopening, this is a testing time for the government, desperate to see the economy getting up from the floor.
The latest reports suggest there is a battle ahead.
The number of workers returning to their offices has not increased since June - in the big cities only 17% according to one survey
In smaller towns in England it is 40%.
London is the worst with only 13%, with just one in ten civil servants at their desks.
Their union is warning that many will not go back until they are sure it is safe.
The BBC says 50 of the country's largest companies have no plans to get staff back to their offices full time.
They include PWC - Price Waterhouse Coopers - most of whose 22,000 staff have been told they can work from home indefinitely.
Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, representing 200,000 businesses, said getting staff back to offices was as important as children returning to school.
City centres were becoming ghost towns, she said
Sandwich firm Pret A Manger's shedding of 2,890 jobs, a third of its work force, seems to confirm her fears.
Some Conservative MPs are urging the prime minister to give a 'clear and consistent message' that it is safe to go back to work or face devastating consequences for town centres.
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