As the Bay Area’s ICU capacity now exceeds 23% – a huge improvement from the last reported ICU availability rate of just 6.5% – the region now falls under the state’s criteria to place its current home order .
In our part of California, things are improving pandemically. Over the past seven days, mass vaccination sites have opened, more COVID-19 vaccine doses have come to the Bay and, especially among these positive updates, the region’s ICU capacity has increased significantly to 23.6%, prompting some health experts to do so. give. increase in the past (and the number of constraints it has caused) something we can leave behind in the past.
“I really want to emphasize that I firmly believe that this is our last boom and that this is the last time that these restrictive barriers will occur due to the availability of the vaccine,” says Dr. . “Because of the new government and the federal government that expressed it and signed the National Defense Act.”
Gandhi also noted to the local news office that she was encouraged by the availability of the ICU in the region and saw COVID-19-related hospitalizations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General, where she works, decline.
However, the elephant in the room remains: Will the current home order of the state be lifted? The Bay Area does meet the criteria to remove it, but it is not entirely clear when that could happen. (Most of the eleven provinces in the Bay, including the city and the province of San Francisco, also have specific COVID-19 restrictions that differ from the state administration, so it’s a bit obscure which one may or may not hold.)
As the Chronicle describes, the lifting of the current closure order will enable the Bay to resume activities allowed under the state’s press restrictions; these include things like eating out, mixing safely with more people outside of your immediate household, and allowing hair salons and other personal care services to resume indoor services.
The state uses a complicated formula (which at best still remains ambiguous) to predict the availability rates of any region’s four-week ICU rates. The order for the Sacramento region was lifted when the availability of the ICU was around 9% – so this is promising news for Bay residents.
This update also comes after Mayor Breed hinted Friday that some of San Francisco’s COVID-19 restrictions may soon weaken as the city’s “COVID-19 reproduction rate” continues to decline.
Nevertheless: put on a mask, take social distance seriously, and for all that is holy in the world … do not come to Puerto Vallarta in spring.
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Image: Getty Images / beerkoff