S.F. stores get OK for Monday reopening
Most retail businesses in San Francisco are expected to be allowed to reopen for curbside sales Monday, barring a significant spike in COVID19 diagnoses and hospitalizations over the next few days.
Mayor London Breed announced the plan Wednesday, a substantial expansion of the one the city unveiled last week, which allowed curbside sales only for certain types of businesses.
San Mateo County is expected to issue similar directives that would loosen some retail restrictions, also starting Monday.
Customers will still not be allowed inside of stores, and transactions will have to be conducted online or outside.
The relaxed restriction on curbside retail sales marks perhaps the biggest shift in the Bay Area’s shelterinplace mandates since they first went into effect in
midMarch, forcing thousands of businesses to close down. Breed said Wednesday that more than 100,000 San Franciscans have applied for unemployment insurance.
“What this means now for our city is incredible. We’re talking about many of those small businesses in various neighborhoods, where you see shops that are closed, they’ll be able to open for pickup and curbside delivery,” Breed said.
“This is not only going to support the jobs that hopefully will return,” she continued. “This will support the communities and the people that love these businesses and want to see them continue.”
In San Francisco, businesses eligible for reopening — 95% of all retailers in the city, Breed said — need to be directly connected to the street. Shopping malls, for example, will not be allowed to reopen.
San Francisco Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said the city would release detailed rules for retailers on Thursday. Retailers that can reopen Monday for curbside sales must have no more than 10 employees on site at any time.
Businesses will also have to adopt social distancing protocols and a health and safety plan in order to reopen.
Warehouses and manufacturers, key parts of the retail supply chain, will also be able to open Monday, under certain conditions. Work at those facilities can resume with 50 or fewer workers onsite, along with other regulations.
“The city’s vision is to balance that very important and helpful step (of reopening businesses) with a continuing need to vigilantly protect community health,” Colfax said.
The region’s comparative success at curbing the spread of the virus and keeping hospitalizations down has prompted the reopening. Over the next few days, health officials will closely monitor the spread of the virus to ensure Monday’s reopening for retail can continue as planned.
They’ll pay particular attention to key indicators that reflect the city’s progress in curbing the spread of the virus, including the number of COVID19 hospitalizations, the number of available hospital beds and supplies of personal protective equipment, like masks, gowns and gloves.
San Mateo County health officer Dr. Scott Morrow is expected to issue an order this week that would allow retail businesses to open for curbside pickup and delivery, according to a county statement released Wednesday. Logistics and manufacturing businesses can also open with some restrictions. More detailed guidelines will be released this week.
Although the county’s coronavirus cases have stabilized, Morrow said, people must still follow socialdistancing and facecovering protocols.
“The virus continues to circulate in our community, and this increase in interactions among people is likely to spread the virus at a higher rate. Whether these modifications allow the virus to spread out of control, as we saw in February and March and resulted in the first shelterinplace order, is yet to be seen,” Morrow said.
The order would align the county with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s guidelines, which allowed retail businesses to reopen with restrictions starting last Friday as part of the early stages of Phase 2 of the state’s road map to recovery.