Many of us want to know when this pandemic will end. That is, unfortunately, a difficult question! There are two ways pandemics come to an end; either the transmission is so well controlled that we come to a point where there are no cases (such as Ebola), or the disease becomes part of our normal infectious disease landscape which is referred to as endemic. Being endemic, or something that we have to live with, does not mean that we do not have to take steps to manage the disease, and it will likely continue to mean some forms of practices that will help to keep rates down.
How easily we can transition into endemicity, and exactly what that looks like, does depend on many factors; some to do with the virus itself, others to do with our response. We (as a society) might tolerate higher numbers of cases if the variant in circulation causes mild disease; conversely we might have to take more action to reduce numbers if a variant is more severe. Another key factor is vaccination; how well it works (especially in more vulnerable people) and also how many people have the vaccine. It is currently not clear how often vaccination might be needed; yearly such as for flu, or more often in response to different variants, or less often if an effective vaccine against a broad spectrum of variants can be found.
For many of the public, COVID-19 might have been their first brush with an infectious disease which requires additional actions such as testing, time off work, notifying contacts etc. However, this is common and established practice for many infectious diseases. We have yet to see what level of control and management COVID-19 will require.