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San Francisco – Health workers in five San Francisco Bay Area counties issued a new stay-at-home order on Friday as the number of coronavirus cases rises and hospitals fill up. The changes will go into effect in most of the area at 10 p.m. on Sunday and will last until January 4.
The majority of counties have yet to meet the threshold Governor Gavin Newsom announced Thursday demanding such an order when 85% of intensive care beds in regional hospitals are full, but officials said hospitals in the region would be overwhelmed in in the weeks to come when Newsom’s order applies. .
“We don’t think we can wait for the new state restrictions to come into effect. This is an emergency,” said Chris Farnitano, health officer at Contra Costa.
The order came on the same day the state recorded another record daily number of cases, with 22,018, and hospitalizations topped 9,000 for the first time.
Restaurants will have to close indoor and outdoor restaurants, bars and wineries to close, as well as hair and nail salons and playgrounds. Retail stores and malls can operate with only 20% customer capacity. Gatherings of any size with persons from outside a household are prohibited.
Berkeley health worker Lisa Hernandez said people shouldn’t meet people they don’t live with in person, “even in small groups, and even outdoors with caution.”
“If you have a social bubble, now it’s burst,” Hernandez said. “Don’t let this be the last vacation with your family.”
The new home order will dramatically cut the most profitable buying season and threaten financial ruin for already struggling businesses after 10 months of recurring and repetitive restrictions and slowing sales due to the pandemic.
The new restrictions were imposed in the counties of San Francisco, Santa Clara, Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa. Those counties, along with San Mateo County, were the first region in the country to order a lockdown on March 17, when the region of 7 million people had fewer than 280 cases and just three deaths. This time around, San Mateo County has chosen to wait for the threshold set by the governor, although officials said it will continue to share hospital beds with others in the area.
The counties in the Bay Area are so closely linked that it was much easier to implement a regional order, officials said.
In Santa Clara County, the headquarters of Apple and Google, officials previously banned all high school, college and professional sports and imposed a quarantine on people traveling to the area from areas more than 250 km away. that officials began to see an increase in cases after Thanksgiving Day. . Compliance officers scattered across the county on Thanksgiving Day and continue to visit businesses to ensure they are following capacity rules and other precautions.
Santa Clara County health official Dr Sara Cody said the number of intensive care beds filled with COVID-19 patients has tripled in the past month and continues to accelerate. 67 new COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospitals on Thursday – a record.
The county of 2 million people had 14% of the intensive care unit’s bed capacity on Friday, below the 15% minimum required by rules set by Newsom, Cody said.
San Francisco health worker Dr Grant Colfax estimates the city, which is also a county, has one week to stabilize the spread of the virus. If hospitalizations continue at the same rate, it is estimated that all nine hospital systems will run out of intensive care unit beds on December 27, he said. “The problem will be that no one can help because of the statewide shortage of hospital beds,” he said.
All counties except Marin are in the most restrictive purple level of the state’s pandemic plan for the economy, which has already forced most non-essential domestic activities to a halt and imposed a daily curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Public health officials have warned that the toll from Thanksgiving gatherings could start to overwhelm hospitals by Christmas.
Last month, the state imposed restrictions in 52 of the state’s 58 counties, including asking people not to leave the state and implementing an overnight curfew on all travel. except essential travel, such as shopping.
But it didn’t work because the data shows people are ignoring the rules, Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s top public health official, admitted Thursday.
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