The shelter-in-place order keeping Bay Area residents in their homes except for essential activities will be extended through the month of May, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday.
“So we are not out of the woods yet. And so we want to be very careful that we not take the steps out of frustration,” she said.
In order for the city and the region to re-open, changes will need to be made to the way businesses like hair and nail salons, restaurants and events operate, Breed said. Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s health director, said health officials are also looking for a sustained decline in the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 before the shelter-in-place order can be lifted. Colfax also said the city would need to double or perhaps triple its testing capacity, and ensure that hospitals maintain surge capacity in order to rapidly respond to an outbreak.
Breed also announced that two major thoroughfares through city parks, John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park and John F. Shelley Drive in McLaren Park, would close to car traffic to enable pedestrians and cyclists to maintain social distancing while they exercise.
The mayor also wrote on Saturday that she would not be signing a city ordinance that set a goal for the city to acquire 8,250 hotel rooms by April 26. She described the idea of housing thousands of homeless people in hotel rooms — the ordinance allocates 7,000 rooms specifically for homeless people — as unrealistic.
“The reality is we can’t do so safely, without making sure that we have the people and the resources and the things necessary in place to keep the folks that we’re serving, that we’re serving safe, and the people who are actually working in these locations safe as well, Breed said. “In the age of social distancing. We have to be more responsible than that.”
Hear this and other updates from the press conference below.
- Breed outlined what needs to happen for the city to re-open, how businesses will need to adapt and warned that the city re-opened too early in 1918 during the Spanish Flu outbreak (5:35)
- Breed said the rental and commercial eviction moratorium has been extended (12:00)
- Breed retracted an earlier statement that personal protective equipment en route to San Francisco had been diverted and confiscated by FEMA. She said this information was incorrect. (16:00)
- Colfax said San Francisco had 1,440 cases of coronavirus, 134 of which were confirmed in homeless individuals. Twenty-three people with the virus have died. (24:00)
- San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said most residents had been compliant with the shelter-in-place and mask-wearing health orders. Eight businesses and seven individuals have been cited for violating health orders. (33:27)
- Breed responded to a question about the supervisors’ ordinance requiring the city to provide 8,250 hotel rooms (40:41)
- Colfax said one of the criteria for relaxing the shelter-in-place order is the number of deaths, which tend to lag a few weeks behind hospitalizations. (50:30)
- Abigail Stewart-Kahn, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, described how the city is giving those who are being housed in hotel rooms operated by the city incentive to remain in their rooms. (55:00)
A segment from our radio show, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco.