Another COVID hurdle cleared
All businesses can open as city reaches yellow tier
San Francisco advanced into the least restrictive tier of California’s colorcoded reopening system Tuesday, allowing most businesses to expand capacity, bars to start serving indoors and large gatherings to resume inside and outside.
Mayor London Breed said the changes will take effect under yellow tier guidelines starting Thursday, now that the city has met state criteria that include lowered coronavirus cases, fewer hospitalizations and other positive health metrics.
“This is an incredible milestone for us to hit as we move forward on our path to recovery,” Breed said in a statement. “The yellow tier means that no longer are there any businesses that are re
quired to keep their doors shut in this city, and it means we are continuing to allow more activities to be done safely with more people.”
In the yellow tier, restaurants, movie theaters, libraries, offices, churches, family entertainment centers, gyms and fitness studios can expand capacity indoors. Indoor bars, breweries and wineries can open at 25% capacity, up to 100 people.
Outdoor conventions, meetings and receptions can resume with up to 200 people, and up to 400 people if all attendees provide proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test. Outdoor organized community sporting events such as marathons may also resume with capacity limits of 1,500 to 3,000 people, depending on the vaccination and testing status of participants.
San Francisco is one of seven of California’s 58 counties to reach the final reopening tier. Los Angeles and Trinity counties also moved to yellow Tuesday, joining Alpine, Sierra, Lassen and Mendocino counties.
Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco’s health director, said the city’s rules will mostly align with the state’s recommendations for yellow tier activities. That will be a change from last fall, when local officials took a more cautious approach to reopening during the city’s brief time in the less restrictive category.
“The freedom the vaccines have given us is the ability to lift our feet off the brakes a little bit,” Philip said. “We don’t want to remain locked down and in yellow. What’s the point of that? We need to do those things — they’re important for our mental and emotional and economic health. And the vaccines gave us the confidence to be able to say, ‘We can do that.’ ”
A total of 72% of eligible San Francisco residents have received at least one shot of a COVID19 vaccine and 49% are fully vaccinated, according to the health department.
San Francisco is averaging 26 new coronavirus infections per day, the lowest since last June. City data shows the number of people in the hospital with COVID19 has dropped below 20 for the first time in more than a year.
“We don’t want to take away from the celebration today, but there’s so much to do,” Philip said. “Other parts of this country, our neighbors to the north in Oregon and Washington — it’s challenging that they’re having surges. And certainly other parts of the world as well. So balancing that hope and optimism without becoming complacent is important. We can’t just hang up our coats and backpacks and say that we’re done yet.”
Marin County, which was also expected to move into the yellow tier, did not qualify to advance out of the orange tier, which signifies moderate virus spread. Dr. Matthew Willis, the county’s health officer, said Marin was stuck “between” orange and yellow.
Even though it reported only three people hospitalized with COVID19 on Tuesday, the county recorded 115 active cases over the past two weeks. Nearly 83% of qualifying residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
“It’s pandemic fatigue,” Willis said. “If you look at the cases we’re seeing, it’s people cutting corners, doing the things we would not be engaging in two months ago because we were more vigilant.”
All the other counties in the Bay Area region remained in the orange tier, the secondmostlenient category, except Solano County, which is still in the red tier.
“We anticipate that all of our neighboring counties will follow because we’re seeing a general trend of decreasing cases and hospitalizations everywhere,” Philip said.
There are no counties in the state that are still in the purple tier, the most restrictive. That’s a reflection of the sharp decline in cases statewide since the beginning of the year. California reported an average of 1,760 new cases per day over the past week, a 25% decrease from two weeks ago, according to data compiled by The Chronicle.
California plans to retire its complex, colorcoded tier system June 15 and allow almost all sectors of the economy to reopen at or near capacity, assuming the state continues to meet vaccination goals and hospitalizations remain low.
“I welcome June 15 when we’re out of the game of using a single metric to determine the tiers,” Willis said.