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The stay-at-home San Francisco order, which was tentatively to be lifted as of January 7, 2021, has been extended “indefinitely,” London Breed Mayor and Health Director Dr Grant Colfax said on Thursday. In addition, officials said the city could maintain its home stay even after the state lifted it, based on “key health indicators.” This means that activities, including outdoor dining, will remain prohibited 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, which was delivered on December 29. the increase in positive coronavirus tests was leveling off. He did not indicate, it should be noted, that the city expected its current lockdown – which the region entered voluntarily on December 6 and was made official by the state on December 16 – would continue through the week. next.
In a press release sent by the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management on Dec. 31, officials wrote that “due to capacity limitations in regional intensive care units and the continuing increase in cases, San Francisco does not expect the Bay Area to meet state thresholds to lift the order “by Jan. 7. That’s probably a reasonable expectation: The state needs the entire Bay Area, which includes the counties 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 demonstrate that 15% of hospital beds in its intensive care unit are free. Right now, while San Francsico has around 32 percent uptime, the region as a whole is at 7.5 percent.
The announcement of the extended stay at the home was a disappointment for Laurie Thomas, executive director of the local food hall at the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. “This is not the news we were hoping to hear,” she said Thursday morning, even acknowledging that “given the 7.5% of the number of regional intensive care capacities released yesterday,” she knew then that the Bay Area was “unlikely to be liberated from this.” order on January 8. “
That said, Thomas says she’s happy the announcement was made now, as opposed to next week, when many assumed the order would be lifted. “We appreciate the city’s efforts to provide businesses with longer notice for planning purposes,” says Thomas, and “we appreciate the recently passed federal COVID relief bill,” but “we continue to stress that we need more financial assistance from the city of San Francisco, the state of California and the federal government. “
Additionally, officials said, a public health order implemented on Dec. 17 requiring that “anyone traveling, moving, or returning to San Francisco from anywhere outside the Bay Area” be quarantined for 10 Days has been extended beyond the original January 4 end date. . It’s a move that “responds to the high prevalence of the coronavirus across the state and country,” officials say, and aims to protect “against the spread of a new variant of the virus recently detected in the UK, in Colorado and California. ”
Even after the area’s ICU bed numbers lifted the stay-at-home order, the city could still be closed, say Breed and Colfax. “Once the state lifts its regional stay-at-home order,” only then will SF “reassess key health indicators to determine whether they support the easing of current restrictions on businesses and businesses. activities, and the resumption of the measured reopening process, ”they say. In other words, even after the state says activities like alfresco dining can resume, San Francisco may continue to restrict take-out and delivery restaurants.
One of the reasons San Francisco could keep the stay-at-home in place is that, so far, it seems to be working. “Although the cases continue to increase, they are increasing at a slower rate than when the orders were implemented,” the city said in a statement. “Thanks to our collective actions, more than 400 deaths could have been prevented.”
“We have been proactive in putting in place the stay at home order and the travel quarantine to protect the San Franciscans and in the hope that by acting quickly we could flatten the curve and reopen more quickly,” said Breed. “It seems to be working, but we need more time to determine that we are going in the right direction and that the December break does not set us back. There are glimmers of hope and now is not the time to let go. “
See the full Home Stay extension announcement here:
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