Hospitalization rates and the number of people infected with the coronavirus in San Francisco's intensive-care units (ICUs) have remained fairly steady since early April. But on Wednesday there was a sudden jump of over 100 new hospital patients with suspected but unconfirmed cases.

While experts have largely agreed that the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 on the West Coast likely came from China, the strain that is gaining dominance in parts of the U.S. and elsewhere in the world appears to be a more contagious one that mutated as it spread in Italy.

Anyone who has to leave their house to work in a grocery store, hardware store, pharmacy, restaurant, or now garden store or nursery can now go and get a free COVID-19 test at one of the city's two walk-up testing sites.