This is the question of San Franciscans: when will COVID-19 restrictions be eased?
The city’s health director was asked the question during a press conference on Tuesday, and while dr. Grant Colfax gave a vague answer, he did hint that the stay-at-home order could continue for weeks.
“Our numbers are still rising, and it usually takes a few weeks for the numbers to start falling once they have leveled off,” Colfax said. “Right now we’re under the state’s shelter-in-place order. I expect we’ll stay that way until at least the end of this month. And really, we’ll have to keep an eye on the numbers to see if cases and hospitalization rates start to drop and then we will have a much better idea of when we will be able to open gradually. ‘
California Governor Gavin Newsom introduced the local home order in early December to prevent local health systems from collapsing amid the notable COVID-19 cases.
It divides the state into five broad regions – SF is part of the greater Bay Area region – and limits those with bed capacity for intensive care units below 15%. The order requires most businesses, in addition to essential services and retail, to close operations. Residents in regions under the command are asked to stay at home, except for work, shopping or other essential activities, such as going to the doctor.
A state can choose to be more restrictive than the state’s local home order, and San Francisco was among the Bay Area provinces that provisionally adopted the order on Dec. 3 before ICU capacity fell below 15%.
The ICU capacity is now far below the threshold and according to state data, the Bay Area region is 4.7% as of Tuesday.
Health officials will not consider lifting the Bay Area mandate until the four-week ICU projection in the region shows a capacity greater than or equal to 15%, according to the California Department of Public Health.
A woman jogging in Golden Gate Park runs past signs reminding people at a social distance and wearing masks in San Francisco on July 28, 2020.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATEColfax opened the press conference on Tuesday with an update on the state of the pandemic in the city.
“What we are currently seeing is a holiday boom on top of an even bigger Thanksgiving boom. We are in a dynamic situation where the cases are increasing in a boom after December, above an already upward boom after Thanksgiving. “After Thanksgiving we saw a 70% increase in cases in the weeks after the holidays. Now we have seen a 28% increase in our increase after the holidays.”
Colfax said the city has an average of about 280 new cases a day, about the same as after Thanksgiving.
As cases increase, hospitalizations increase, and as of Tuesday, there were 249 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in SF, up from 114 at the height of the summer boom in July, Colfax said.
“We need to work to flatten this curve,” Colfax said. “We have to fix it.”
According to Colfax, vaccines are an important tool to curb the virus and the city wants to expand infrastructure to administer the vaccine, and will also open places in the city as the vaccine supply increases. The city has focused on vaccinating health care workers and residents of skilled nursing homes, and this week the San Francisco Health Network will vaccinate people 65 and older at their 14 primary care locations, including the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Laguna Honda Hospital. More than 14,000 people age 65 and older are served by the San Francisco Health Network. The network provides health care regardless of immigration status or lack of insurance.
Colfax noted that 95% of the San Francisco population has health insurance – primarily through Kaiser, Sutter Health and UCSF – and that these residents should look to their providers for vaccinations.