SF News COVID Hospitalizations in California Up 100% From Mid-April Low; Bay Area Returns to Early March Levels Hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19 — some of whom may have been hospitalized for another ailment and happened to be COVID-positive — have ticked back up across California as a result of the latest surge.
SF News They’re Back — Indoor Mask Mandates Return to Berkeley Schools, In What May Be the Shape of Things to Come Hoping to just make it through the rest of the school year without further COVID catastrophes, Berkeley Unified School District puts the indoor mask mandate back on.
SF News Bay Area Health Officers Issue New Statement Strongly Urging Mask-Wearing Indoors Amid Uptick In Hospitalizations COVID hospitalizations in the Bay Area ticked above the 500 mark for the first time since early March on Thursday, and daily new case counts continue to be high in San Francisco and elsewhere around the region amid the BA.2 surge.
SF News Bay Area Scientists Sound the Alarm That Omicron Subvariants Are Reinfecting People Like Mad SF wastewater data indicate COVID-19 infections may have doubled in the last two weeks, as new variant “sublineages” are finding ever-new ways to evade the antibodies.
SF News UCSF's Dr. Wachter on COVID Watch After Wife Tests Positive While Traveling One of our local pandemic-era soothsayers, UCSF Medical School's Dr. Bob Wachter, may soon be dealing with his own bout of COVID-19 for the first time, in a story now increasingly familiar among those who have been extra-cautious and COVID-free up until now.
SF News San Francisco, Three Other Bay Area Counties Return to CDC's 'Yellow' Tier as Latest COVID Surge Hits You may know someone with COVID right now, or you may have it yourself, as San Francisco is a couple of weeks into a surge being driven by the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.
SF News We Have Hit One Million COVID-19 Deaths In the United States America remains the nation with the highest COVID-19 death toll in the world, and regrettably, this week, the country suffered its millionth COVID death.
SF News UCSF’s Dr. Bob Wachter Says He’s Masking Up Again, Says 1 in 30 San Franciscans Has COVID and Doesn’t Know It COVID Twitter sage Dr. Bob Wachter says “there's a lot of Covid out there” in San Francisco, encouraging masking up indoors as he estimates that one out of every 30 asymptomatic people in SF are indeed positive for COVID-19.
Business & Tech Airbnb Ending Their Refunds for COVID-19 Cancellations You will no longer get a refund if you cancel your Airbnb reservation due to COVID-19 after the end of this month, which happens to coincide with the launch of the company’s forthcoming "guest travel insurance product.”
SF News Winning Personality Who Coughed on Uber Driver Last Year Arrested For Identity Theft In Miami The 25-year-old woman whose friends and family probably should have sat her down years ago and confronted her about her penchant for poor choices is once again in legal trouble, this time in Miami.
SF News BART Just Reinstated Its Mask Mandate Through Mid-July BART is now the lone transit agency in the Bay Area with a mask mandate, after going a week with some flip-flopping on the policy.
SF Politics Kamala Has COVID, For Real This Time Vice President Kamala Harris has, like a slew of D.C. denizens, tested positive for COVID and is isolating. The positive test comes about a month after Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff contracted the virus.
SF News Remember the COVID-Stricken Cruise Ship That Docked In SF Last Month? It Just Reported Another Outbreak The Ruby Princess cruise ship docked at the Port of San Francisco in late March with a slew of positive COVID-19 cases in tow. Well, the superspreader vessel recently arrived in Hawaii... with 143 COVID-19 cases on board, according to a new report.
SF News Now at 5%, SF's COVID-19 Positivity Rate Considered 'Too High' by Some Health Experts At this present juncture, San Francisco's positivity rate for COVID-19 sits at 5.1% — sparking concern amongst experts at John Hopkins University. Why? The last time SF saw such a high positivity rate was in January at the start of that season's holiday surge, which later peaked at 18.9%.
SF News Nearly One In Six Attendees Got COVID at San Mateo High School's Prom Of the 600 attendees at the prom held at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum on April 9th, 90 tested positive for COVID-19.
SF News [Update] BART Says Hold Up, You Still Need to Wear Masks, Then Reverses Following that federal judge's ruling on Monday that abruptly ended mask mandates on planes and public transit, BART reportedly told its police not to enforce mask-wearing on Tuesday. But now, they've issued a statement similar to the SFMTA's saying masks are still required, for now.
SF News Are We Seeing a Fifth COVID Surge In SF Right Now? Probably. The official daily case count probably isn't reliable, but other metrics suggest that San Francisco is probably in the midst of its BA.2 surge, which experts predicted would likely not be as significant as this past winter's first Omicron surge.
SF News Masks Come Off on BART, Airplanes, and In Uber and Lyft Cars — But Not Muni — Following Ruling By Trump-Appointed Judge A Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida issued a ruling Monday that denied the authority of the CDC to continue its federal mask mandate on planes and public transit — a mandate that was set to expire in two weeks anyway.
SF News Masks to Only Be Required on Planes and Public Transit Until May 3 The CDC just extended its federal mask mandate for airplanes and public transit another two weeks, until May 3, amid rising cases of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, particularly on the East Coast.
SF News Anyone Who Tests Positive For COVID In San Francisco and Has Risk Factors Should Seek Out Antivirals, City Says San Francisco has a supply of the two antiviral drugs approved for treating cases of COVID-19, but they may have to return thousands of doses if they don't get used — and thousands have already been returned to the federal government.
SF News Naturopathic Quack In Napa Takes Plea In Federal Case Involving Fake Vaccine Cards and Fake Vaccine 'Pellets' A Napa-based naturopathic doctor took matters a little too far in her homeopathic advice to patients about COVID-19, both discouraging them from getting "toxic" vaccines and duping them into taking pellets she claimed would provide lifelong immunity from the virus.
SF News COVID Cases In SF Still Slightly Higher Than Elsewhere In California, Hospitalizations Plateau There is no cause for alarm, local experts say, but San Francisco's COVID picture isn't yet back to the very low case counts of mid-Fall 2021, with the Omicron and BA.2 variants still driving transmission as people's immunity wanes.
SF News Notorious COVID Cruise Ship Docked Again in SF with Infected Passengers Sunday, But It’s Gone Now The Ruby Princess cruise ship, once known as the “Plague Ship” for its superspreading role early in the pandemic, arrived at the Port of San Francisco with positive cases Sunday, but left for Hawaii later in the day.
Arts & Entertainment No Need for Vaxx Cards at Chase Center Starting Next Month, But You Still Need Your Mask If You're Unvaxxed The lifting of mandates has come at a very fast pace in California in recent weeks, and now we officially have word from the Chase Center that they will stop checking vaccination status as of April 1.
SF News Yet Another COVID-19 Surge? Wastewater Samples Suggest That Yes, We May Be in for Another Wave While it may just be a blip, the CDC confirms that wastewater samples from a third of the country’s sample sites show increasing case counts, right while China and Europe are seeing big COVID surges.
