Family and friend gatherings, and birthday parties, remain some of the main points of COVID transmission according to San Francisco contact tracers. And thus Mayor London Breed says she'll be celebrating her birthday today in a socially distanced fashion.
Breed shared this detail during her latest video briefing today, in addition to updates on the city's COVID metrics, and the latest on the city budget, which is set to include nearly half a billion dollars in pandemic-related expenses.
"From our contact tracers, we know that many people are contracting the virus because they're having family gatherings, birthday parties and other events," Breed said."Today is my birthday and I wish I could have a birthday party," she continued. "And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to socially distance and talk to people on Zoom."
SF Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax also provided updates on the pandemic situation in San Francisco, noting that "Anything above 50 new cases a day puts us in the 'red zone,' on our highest alert, and we have been there for the past seven weeks."
As of Tuesday, the city recorded 69 new cases — a 0.9% uptick from Monday. Deaths have been steadily climbing at nearly one per day in recent weeks, after weeks of nearly zero deaths. There have now been 67 deaths among COVID patients in the city since March, and a total of 7,692 cumulative cases.
Hospitalizations have been slowly declining after surging in late July, and currently there are 96 confirmed and suspected COVID patients in SF hospitals. That is down from a peak of 128 on July 29 — with the all-time peak since March being 212 patients on April 6.
Meanwhile, other Bay Area counties continue seeing higher numbers of positive cases and hospitalizations, though the numbers may also be declining slightly there.
Contra Costa County added 383 new cases today, a 4.1% jump over Monday. Alameda County added nearly 450 cases today. And Santa Clara County added over 700 cases on Monday — possibly as a consequence of the state-level data backlog — and another 270 today.
Combined, those three counties have over 530 COVID patients in hospitals.
