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The counties of San Francisco and San Mateo were demoted to the “purple” level in the state’s reopening plan starting Saturday. Marin County is the only county in the Bay Area that remains in the “red” category (significant extent).
San Francisco Mayor London Breed made the announcement on Saturday afternoon via social networks, calling the latest COVID-19 figures “the most aggressive outbreak SF has seen to date.”
“We are currently registering an average of 118 new cases per day, up from 73 per day in the first week of November,” Breed wrote in a series of tweets. “For the week of November 16, we had 768 cases diagnosed versus 217 cases diagnosed the week of October 12.”
As of noon Sunday, Breed announced that retail stores, including malls and essential retail stores, were to reduce indoor capacity to 25%. This does not include stand-alone grocery stores, which are allowed to continue to operate at 50 percent of their capacity.
Outdoor attractions, such as carousels and Ferris wheels, as well as indoor cinemas, indoor gyms and fitness centers, indoor museums, aquariums and zoos, must close.
Starting Monday at 10 p.m., San Francisco will begin tracking the state’s limited stay-at-home order and will ban different households from gathering indoors and outdoors between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. until December 21. declared further.
To see an up-to-date list of restrictions, head to the City of San Francisco website here.
San Mateo County also said it will follow the stay-at-home order from California starting Monday at 10 p.m.
San Mateo County reported a spike of about 85% in new COVID-19 cases from October through November, according to the county statement. The county’s new adjusted case rate is now 7.6 per 100,000 population.
“We haven’t seen numbers like this in quite a while and we really need to reverse this incredibly disturbing trend,” County Manager Mike Callagy said in the county statement. “The important thing to remember is that we can turn the tide as long as we follow sound health and safety practices.”
The updated list of San Mateo County restrictions can be found here.
The state system classifies counties into four levels – “purple” (widespread), “red” (substantial), “orange” (moderate) or “yellow” (minimal) – which measures the spread of COVID-19 and dictates the types of businesses and activities are allowed to open. The structure allows counties to be more restrictive and move more slowly than the state in its reopening if they so choose.
County level assignment is based on two key parameters: case rate (number of new cases per 100,000 population) and positivity rate (percentage of people who tested positive for the virus of all people tested.) A measure of health equity is also part of the equation but only comes into play to help a county move to a less restrictive level.
Counties in the purple category report more than seven new daily cases per 100,000 population and have positivity rates above 8%. For a county to go red, it must report fewer than seven daily cases per 100,000 population and a test positive rate of less than 8% for 14 consecutive days. The orange level requires less than 3.9 cases per 100,000 and a test positivity below 4.9%, and the yellow requires less than one case per 100,000 and less than 2% positivity.
SFGATE Editor-in-Chief Amy Graff contributed to this report.
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