San Francisco residents traveling outside the Bay no longer need to be quarantined for ten days when they arrive home, but the city still encourages its residents to follow the travel advice of the state that does not require essential travel far from do not recommend your home, city officials said in a statement released Tuesday.
The city imposed the mandatory quarantine in mid-December in response to an increase in cases caused by Thanksgiving travel. While the quarantine was mandatory, there was no system to ensure people followed it.
The lifting of the stricter quarantine rule comes as the city experienced a dramatic decrease in infections and recorded an average of seven days of 89 cases per day, compared to an average peak of 374 cases per day at the peak of the most recent surge .
“To cancel this assignment does not mean that it is now safe to just get on a plane or go on a road trip,” said Dr. Susan Philip, acting health officer in San Francisco, said in a statement. “It’s not a journey for everyone. We have made tremendous progress and dropped our case numbers, but we need to keep our guards. The increasing prevalence of variants, some of which have been brought from abroad, is further proof that we need to be extra careful. If we do everything we need to do – wear masks, physically distance ourselves, avoid indoor meetings with other households – we can continue to reopen businesses, schools and community activities. Being voluntarily quarantined after traveling outside the state or 120 miles from home helps you protect everyone. Let’s go forward, not backward. ”
The state issued a travel advice for the first time in mid-November, still discouraging residents from making essential trips to any part of California, more than 20 miles (20 km) from your place of residence. For those living in the Bay, this could mean that a trip to Tahoe, Big Sur or Mount Shasta is out of reach. In addition, state counsel recommends that anyone who arrives in California or returns to other states ten days after arrival has self-quarantine.