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You will be able to remove your mask at select indoor locations in the City of San Francisco starting next week, but across the Bay Area, mask orders will likely still be in place for most public places for the remainder of this year. the year.
It appears the Mayor of London Breed got what he wanted, in part, by urging the city’s health official to relax the mask’s tenure ten weeks after his recovery in August. A new order in town today, separate from the announcement made by a coalition of Bay Area health workers, says San Franciscans may be unmasked in offices, gyms, church gatherings and indoor gatherings of friends or colleagues where 100% of people are fully immunized.
Bars and restaurants will therefore have to maintain mask orders until further notice – although most bars and clubs do not strictly enforce the rule that you must remain masked when walking or not actively drinking. .
Dr Susan Philip, the city’s health officer, said in a statement: “We recognize that now is the time to start taking steps to relax some of the masking requirements in safer environments and plan for when we do. can safely lift them wider. “
“I am delighted that we have once again come to a place where we can start to relax mask requirements, which is a direct result of the fact that we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, our cases have declined and our residents have done their part to keep them and those around them safe, ”Mayor Breed said in a statement.“ This is an important step forward for San Francisco, especially for our downtown. city, because when I talk to office workers and business leaders, one of the things I keep hearing is that they are eager to get back to a more normal work routine. where they can interact with their colleagues. “
While the number of SF cases did not reach the very low levels they were in June when the statewide mask mandate and other pandemic mitigation measures were lifted, they continue to decline, as do hospitalizations. As of September 29, the last day for which data is available, 43 new cases of COVID have been detected in the city and the seven-day moving average of cases was 76.
Due to the delta’s surge over the summer, 71 more deaths from COVID occurred in San Francisco between July and September, bringing the cumulative total of deaths from the pandemic to 644 on Wednesday.
Dr Grant Colfax, director of SF’s public health department, took the opportunity to praise the city’s successes in the pandemic.
“Throughout this pandemic, we have implemented common sense measures like masking and vaccinations to protect ourselves against four outbreaks of COVID-19 while keeping hospitalizations manageable,” Colfax said. “Tragically, other parts of the country have seen far worse results than ours. San Francisco’s health ordinances and shared mitigation efforts have been successful in keeping us safer as a community, and a loosening of ordinances masking is warranted. We will continue to follow data and science to where they take us. “
The coalition of health workers also announced on Thursday the criteria by which counties in the Bay Area will lift orders for masks.
They are:
- The jurisdiction reaches the COVID-19 moderate (yellow) transmission level, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and remains there for at least three weeks; AND
- COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the jurisdiction are low and stable, according to the judgment of the health worker; AND
- 80% of the total population of the jurisdiction is fully vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson (booster doses not taken into account) WHERE eight weeks have passed since a COVID-19 vaccine was cleared for emergency use by federal and state authorities for children five to 11 years old.
While vaccination rates are high and increasingly high in most areas of the Bay Area, the first criterion has yet to be met in any Bay Area county. Most of the nine-county area is in the “substantial” or orange transmission level as defined by the CDC, including San Francisco, and Napa is currently in the “high” or red level.
In addition, most counties will struggle to achieve 80% immunization for all residents until vaccines are approved for children aged 5 to 11. San Francisco has vaccinated 83% of residents over 12, but still only 75% of all residents.
Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
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