Governor Gavin Newsom began teasing out more details about California's reopening timeline, which will be pushing forward this week for 47 of the state's 58 counties with the reopening of restaurants, barbershops, and hair salons, with modifications. SF is not one of them.
47 counties have now completed an attestation process with the governor's office, as ABC 7 reports, which allows them to move ahead to the second half of Phase 2 — which allows for personal services like nail and hair salons to reopen, and also lets dine-in restaurants reopen as well. Most of the Bay Area is not moving into this phase yet, but that may change in a few weeks.
The requirements for reopening are simpler for more rural counties where there have been few COVID-19 cases so far. They include being able to show that the county has had no more than 25 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 per 100,000 residents over past 14 days, and that there is a minimum capacity to perform 1.5 tests per 1,000 residents daily. Also, there needs to be no more than 20 COVID patients in hospitals in the county for the last 14 days.
Currently in San Francisco there are 52 COVID-positive patients in hospitals, with an additional 37 suspected cases awaiting results. In Santa Clara County there are 54 COVID patients in hospitals, and in Alameda County there are now 91.
The other counties that are not yet moving into Phase 2.5 are Contra Costa, Imperial, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Tulare counties.
As Mayor London Breed told ABC 7 last week regarding the next steps of reopening in SF, "I'm hopeful, but I want to be clear that we are although coordinating with the governor's office, we have to use the data locally here in San Francisco to make a determination as to whether or not we can move into any of those phases."
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody was more stark in her statement, saying,"The conditions really haven't changed in our county. We don't suddenly have herd immunity, we don't suddenly have a vaccine, we have exactly the same conditions that we had in March. So that if we did ease up, we would see a brisk return of cases, hospitalizations, and a brisk return of deaths."
Santa Clara County reopened retail for curbside pickup just a few days behind five other Bay Area counties last week.
Phase 3, in which higher-risk businesses like bars, nightclubs, and movie theaters can reopen, is likely not coming for San Francisco, Alameda, or Santa Clara County until later in the summer.