The home order of San Francisco, which would tentatively be expected to rise on January 7, 2021, has been extended ‘indefinitely’, said Mayor London Breed and director of health, dr. Grant Colfax, announced Thursday. In addition, officials say the city can keep its home in its place, even after the state lifts it, depending on ‘key health indicators’. This means that activities, including dining out, will remain banned in San Francsico for an unforeseen period of time.
The announcement came as a surprise to those who attended Colfax’s final speech of the year, delivered on 29 December. While warning that New Year’s Eve gatherings could be ‘catastrophic’ for the COVID-19 case rate in the area, he also said the increase in positive coronavirus tests was slowing. He pointed out that he had given no indication that the city would expect its current closure – which entered the region voluntarily on December 6 and was made official by the state on December 16 – to continue next week.
In a press release sent by the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management on December 31, officials wrote that ‘due to the ongoing local ICU capacity constraints and the continuing increase in business, San Francisco does not expect the Bay Area to reach the thresholds of the state will reach the order ”by 7 January. This is probably a reasonable expectation: the state needs the entire Bay Area region, which includes the provinces of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, Monterey, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano and San Francisco, as well as the city of Berkeley, to show that 15 percent of its hospital beds for intensive care units are free. At present, San Francsico is about 32 percent available, but the region is currently 7.5 percent.
The announcement of the stay-at-home extension was a disappointment for Laurie Thomas, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association’s local lobby. “This is not the news we were hoping to hear,” she said on Thursday morning, acknowledging that “given the 7.5 percent local ICU capacity figure posted yesterday,” she then knew that the Bay was likely will not be released from there. ordered on January 8th. ”
That said, Thomas says she’s glad the announcement was made now, unlike next week, when many assumed the order would be lifted. “We appreciate the city’s effort to provide more advance notice for planning purposes,” says Thomas, and “we appreciate the newly approved federal bill on COVID,” but “we continue to emphasize that we need more financial relief from the city of San Francisco,” the state of California and the federal government. ”
In addition, officials say, a public health order implemented on Dec. 17 that requires “anyone traveling, moving or returning to San Francisco from anywhere outside the Bay” is quarantined for ten days after the initial end date. of 4 January. It is a decision that ‘responds to the significant prevalence of the coronavirus across the state and country’, say officials and is intended to protect ‘against the spread of a new variant of the virus recently in the UK,’ Colorado, and California. ”
Even after the ICU bed number allows it to cancel the home stay, the city can still be locked, Breed and Colfax say. “Once the state lifts its local home order ordinance,” only then will SF “reevaluate the key health indicators to determine whether it relaxes current restrictions on businesses and activities and resumes the measured reopening process,” they say. In other words, even after the state said it could resume activities such as outdoor dining, San Francisco could continue to restrict restaurants from pick-up and drop-off.
One reason San Francisco can keep the homestead in place is that so far it seems to be working. “Although business is still climbing, it is increasing more slowly than when the orders were implemented,” the city said in a statement. “As a result of our collective action, more than 400 deaths may have occurred.”
“We were proactive in putting the home stay and quarantine in place to protect San Franciscans, and in the hope that we could quickly flatten the curve and open up faster,” Breed says. ‘It seems to be working, but we need more time to establish that we are moving in the right direction and that the December holidays are not holding us back. There are sparks of hope and now is not the time to disappoint. ”
See the full stay announcement here: