SAN FRANCISCO—On Thursday, June 25, San Francisco’s Director of Health publicly announced that bars in the city could reopen for outdoor drinking on Monday, and other businesses and attractions such as zoos and museums were given the OK to reopen as well. However, a change in plans means that the zoo, museums, bars, hair salons and other businesses that were all previously allowed to reopen on June 29 will now remain closed until further notice.
The following day on June 26, Mayor London Bred reversed the decision to reopen as she announced on Twitter that she was concerned about the recent upward trend in COVID-19 cases, and that she will put reopening plans on hold: “Yesterday we saw 103 cases. On June 15, when we first reopened outdoor dining and in-store retail, we had 20. At our current rate, the number could double rapidly. If that continues & we don’t intervene, we’ll be at such a high number that our only option would be to shut down,” Mayor Breed tweeted on June 26.
San Francisco’s pause on reopening is not a total shutdown, rather it is a strategy to avoid a second complete shutdown such as the one that was ordered in March. Businesses that have already opened will be allowed to remain open, for now. In the meantime, public health experts will evaluate data over the next few days and weeks to determine when it will be safe to reopen. “Our public health experts will evaluate the data over the coming days to determine if it’s safe to move forward,” Mayor Breed stated in a Tweet “I know people are anxious to reopen- I am too. But we can’t jeopardize the progress we’ve made.”
