Authorities and aid workers have cleared tens of thousands of bodies from the rubble, provided water supplies for makeshift refugee camps and developed a system of food distribution. Some police are back in the streets, schools in unaffected areas will open on Monday, communications are working and some businesses have reopened their doors.
"On the 13th of January, we woke up without telephones, with thousands of dead on the streets, and today telephones are working, there are no more bodies in the streets. We have collected more than 150,000, but there are still bodies under the rubble and we'll see how we can get them," President Rene Preval told Reuters this week.
"Gas stations are working normally, commercial activities have resumed ... A lot of progress has been made." The government, with international assistance, must provide long-term shelter, food supplies, healthcare and sanitation for the legions left homeless, and do so in the few months before the hurricane season - and its risks of deadly winds and flooding - hits its stride in July.
Security is one of the biggest challenges. The earthquake weakened Haiti's security forces, triggered looting and left many people more vulnerable than ever to criminal gangs in the capital. The post-quake exodus of residents to the countryside could also contribute to the spread of urban problems.
"While the international community begins the long road to co-ordination and collaboration of assistance, daily life in Haiti will require a secure and stable environment if the tasks of rebuilding the nation are to happen," said Johanna Mendelson Forman, a former adviser to the UN mission in Haiti and now a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Schools will reopen in areas unaffected by the earthquake on February 1, and authorities will also begin to assess what is left of schools in the areas that were hit. Most schools in Port-au-Prince were reduced to rubble.