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San Francisco again avoided being banned at the state’s most restrictive purple level on Sunday, even as coronavirus cases soared. But residents should not hope: it is likely to happen again this week, officials said.
The purple designation would put the city under California’s new curfew order within two days and force almost all indoor activity to stop just in time for the stuffing and turkey on Thanksgiving.
Once San Francisco is downgraded to purple level, indoor operations such as museums, cinemas, gymnasiums, and places of worship are expected to be closed within 24 hours. The curfew, which requires non-essential activities to stop between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., would go into effect two days after the change to purple.
“The state has yet to reassign us to the most restrictive level of purple,” said a spokesperson for the Mayor of London Breed. “We stay in red from today, but we hope to be reassigned this week.”
The new restrictions would also include a ban on indoor social gatherings, which are currently allowed for up to three households. Assuming the new restrictions arrive before Thursday, that would force Thanksgiving festivities – which the city has strongly discouraged anyway – outside.
As of Friday, 41 of 58 counties in California, representing nearly 95% of the state’s population, were in the purple level. Gov. Gavin Newsom released the one-month curfew for all purple counties on Thursday, and it went into effect Saturday night at 10 p.m. Six of the nine counties in the Bay Area are currently in the purple level. In the Bay Area, this included all counties except San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo.
Public health officials hope the curfew, along with other efforts to discourage people from congregating or interacting with those outside their homes, will reduce the rate of new infections and will prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed – something the Bay Area managed to do in the previous pandemic. waves.
New weekly coronavirus cases have more than tripled in the past month, Dr Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said on Friday. The models suggest that if the current outbreak continues unabated, “we could imagine having hundreds of people in hospital by the end of December or beginning of January,” he said.
JK Dineen is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]
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