San Francisco is expected to return to the state’s orange redevelopment level on March 24, but Mayor London Breed said on Tuesday that the city is likely to adopt some restrictions that are stricter than state guidelines allow.
It was not immediately clear how the city planned more strictly than the orange guidelines of the state, which allow breweries to open indoors with a capacity of 25%, music and sports halls with a capacity of 20% to open outside and pubs that do not serve food to work outside. The city is hold a webinar on Thursday on the guidelines.
“We want to be careful, because when we start giving people the vaccine, we also know we’re still in this pandemic. We do not want to go backwards, ”said Breed. “I know this San Francisco Department of Public Health, despite some objections from people I know struggling with their businesses, was very conservative.”
According to Breed, non-essential offices will be allowed to reopen below the orange level, indicating a moderate spread of the coronavirus, and the city is likely to expand capacity in restaurants and gyms indoors. The state allows restaurants to work 50% and gyms at 25% in the orange level. It still encourages office workers to stay remote.
‘So we’ll probably offer some expansion of the things we’re already doing, and also add office space. But in the end, we’re going to continue to be probably more conservative than the state will allow to make sure I never have to get up here again and close our city, ” Breed said, adding at a Western Addition health center appeared. to get a chance on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Tuesday.
San Mateo County on Tuesday became the first province in the Bay Area to return to an orange level on Tuesday, a day before the annual commemoration of the region’s first shelter.
The cases decreased as more people received vaccinations. San Francisco has reported about 75 new cases in the past seven days, down 26% from the previous week.
It was not clear whether many workers would return to large office buildings after San Francisco reached an orange level. Many tech companies like Salesforce and Facebook have said employees can work remotely until at least the summer. Others like Twitter said workers can stay remote forever.
Google, which has postponed the return to offices until September, said Tuesday that no plans have changed.
Wells Fargo has opened a few branches, which is an essential business, but said its office plans will not change for at least six weeks. Most of the bank’s 266,000 global employees, which includes about 7,000 in San Francisco, work from home.
“Until at least May 1, we will continue with our current operating model, which includes approximately 200,000 employees who work from home and maintain safety measures in places that remain open. “We will give all employees adequate notice before making any significant changes, and we will continue to create a thoughtful, phased plan to return to the workplace,” said Ruben Pulido, a spokesman for Wells Fargo.
Other companies did not immediately have information about the reopening of plans or did not respond to requests for comment.
Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] @rolandlisf