In Bay Area
Swings and slides, yes. Ghosts and goblins, no: S. F. takes the padlocks off of city playgrounds, but the state officially warns against traditional Halloween activities.
Children in San Francisco can once again take to the swings, slides and monkey bars of the city’s 180plus playgrounds on Wednesday, as officials remove the yellow tape and open the padlocks that have kept them offlimits since March to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
A day in the park will be a lot less carefree during the pandemic, as visitors will have to observe capacity limits and follow a long list of safety guidelines San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department has established in compliance with state restrictions.
Under preliminary rules, playground visits will be limited to 30 minutes when others are present. Adults and children must maintain 6 feet of distance from people who are not members of their households. And everyone 2 years and older must wear a face covering.
Additionally, only one adult may accompany each child to allow more space for play. That adult must actively supervise their children at all times and avoid nonessential cell phone use, per the new regulations. Children under the age of 2 must remain within reaching distance.
The city guidelines also state that eating and drinking are not allowed at its playgrounds.
Even though a visit to a recreation area may provide some relief to coopedup children, infectious disease experts caution they could still pose multiple layers of risk.
“You have to take what we understand about the natural course of the disease with also the ability to comply with riskmitigation elements,” said Elizabeth Rogers, a pediatrician with UCSF. “Is the firstgrader going to keep a mask on? Can a firstgrader respect physical distancing?”
Children account for 10.7% of the reported coronavirus cases in the U. S., according to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and may not be as rigorous as adults about following protocols. It is unlikely that their fingers will reach for a bottle of hand sanitizer before going up their noses.
While surface transmission is not believed to be the primary route of infection, it may be possible that a person can get the coronavirus by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose or eyes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The California Department of Public Health gave the goahead for public playgrounds and other outdoor recreational facilities to reopen on Sept. 29, but city officials decided to wait until case and hospitalization rates in the city leveled off.
Despite the playgrounds being offlimits, on any given day children can be seen using the play structures.
On Tuesday, Mary Houlihan was at Presidio Wall playground with her grandchildren, ages 1 and 3, and said she was happy to hear the playgrounds would officially reopen.
“The children are loving it,” she said. “The kids were missing it.”
She said she’d visited the Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park and Mountain Lake Park playground in recent days with them and both were busy even though the playgrounds are not officially open.
Houlihan, who was visiting from New York, said she felt safe using the closed playgrounds with kids social distancing and everyone wearing masks.
San Francisco became one of the first counties in the state to reach the orange tier of California’s colorcoded reopening system, though the city has consistently moved more cautiously than what state officials have permitted around reopening.