SF Considers Tighter COVID-19 Restrictions, California Flirts With Lockdown

Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday announced that the state could be headed toward another shelter-in-place order. The news comes as 99 percent of California’s population is already subject to the state’s most restrictive purple tier in the COVID-19 Blueprint for a Safer Economy.

That means that more than 39 million California residents currently can’t dine at indoor restaurants and are under a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, among several other restrictions imposed on indoor shopping capacity, indoor worship, school attendance and so on.    

The warning was prompted by an alarming projection that the state’s supply of ICU beds could be quickly nearing capacity.

Newsom said via Twitter Monday:

“Current projections show CA will run out of ICU beds before Christmas Eve.”

He added that the state COVID-19 hospitalization rate increased by 89 percent in the past two weeks and that “if these trends continue, our current hospitalizations could increase by 2-3 times” within the next month, possibly requiring what he called “more dramatic, arguably drastic action.”

More than 99 percent of California’s population is under the most restrictive purple tier in the state’s COVID-19 Blueprint for a Safer Economy. (Graphic courtesy of California Department of Public Health)

San Francisco is responding to the upward case trend somewhat proactively, considering that the city/county is still faring relatively well compared to nearby areas where the virus has run rampant. In a YouTube press statement Tuesday, Mayor London Breed and Director of Public Health Dr. Grant Colfax said they may further reduce indoor retail capacity and are considering a mandatory 14-day travel quarantine.

Santa Clara County swiftly imposed a mandatory self-quarantine for anyone who’s been more than 150 miles outside county limits — the requirement went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, catching many uninformed travelers off guard.

Santa Clara and Alameda counties are having a particularly hard time mitigating the virus. As of Monday night, the two counties reached a grim COVID-19 death count of 988, representing 51 percent of the total deaths across the Bay Area. 

According to health department data across the nine-county region, more than 800 COVID-19 patients are currently being treated in Bay Area hospitals — nearly 200 are in ICU beds.