San Francisco added to state’s watchlist
All but one of the Bay Area’s nine counties have been put on the state’s coronavirus watchlist amid an alarming uptick in cases and hospitalizations after San Francisco joined its neighbors Friday, and San Mateo County officials soon expect the same fate.
San Francisco will continue to pause the county’s reopening plans indefinitely as it tries to get a recent hospital surge under control, said Director of Health Dr. Grant Colfax, and follow state orders to shut down indoor malls and nonessential offices.
“If San Franciscans stopped gatherings, wore their face masks at all times and socially distanced, we would be able to get the situation under control,” Colfax said in a news briefing Friday. “It’s that simple. … We know how to do it, but we must do it, and we must do it quickly.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s monitoring list rapidly has grown to more than 30 jurisdictions amid a statewide swell of COVID-19 cases. Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, Solano and Napa counties were already on the list. As of Friday, every county in the region had crossed the state threshold of 10 coronavirus cases for every 10,000 residents, according to an analysis
by this news organization.
That number in particular puts San Mateo at risk of becoming the last Bay Area county to weather another wave of shutdowns. With an average of about 101 cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks, county health chief Louise Rogers said Friday she expects the state “will likely put us on the list soon.”
Newsom ordered indoor dining and other activities to shut down statewide earlier this week, allowing counties not on the watch list to keep select indoor businesses open such as gyms, hair salons, malls and places of worship. If San Mateo is added to the list, those establishments — some of which have been open since late June — soon will have to close again.
“This is heartbreaking news for the workers and owners of these mostly small businesses,” said Supervisor David Canepa. “We have plenty of hospital beds and are ready for a surge. I don’t want to take a step back, but we must all be prepared. This will require an extraordinary effort at every level of government to ensure these businesses do not fail.”
Hospitalizations are the biggest point of concern in San Francisco, where 99 patients were confirmed to have COVID-19 as of Tuesday, up from 32 patients in mid-June — and marking the most since April.
Earlier this week, Colfax warned of “major problems” this upcoming fall, including a never-seen-before hospital spike, if coronavirus transmission rates don’t soon improve across the county. Sick San Franciscans are on average infecting about 1.3 others with the coronavirus, a rate that the county wants to shrink below one.
County officials also will require private providers to step up testing efforts starting Monday. About 60% of tests have been performed by public testing sites so far, a burden that the county wants to shift elsewhere to focus more on vulnerable populations like uninsured people, essential workers and Latino residents. The new order will mandate private health care groups to provide same-day testing to symptomatic people, close contacts of confirmed cases and workers with no symptoms but at high risk of exposure. Santa Clara County issued a similar order this month.
Yet testing more broadly isn’t the path out of the current surge, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said. In an emotional address, the mayor, who recently had her own COVID-19 scare, called on the city’s residents to stop gathering with people outside their households and to take social distancing seriously.
“If you’re going to a barbecue and acting irresponsibly … you’re endangering people’s lives. We all want to move on with reopening,” Breed said.