SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - California continues to have the lowest COVID infection rates in the country, according to the CDC.
It's the only state that has "moderate" levels of transmission compared with 48 other states stuck in "high transmission" and one other state, Connecticut, in the second-worst "substantial" transmission tier.
In addition, San Francisco's COVID cases are among the lowest of any California county. Because of that, San Francisco could see relaxations in its strict indoor mask mandate in the near future.
While San Francisco Health Director, Dr. Grant Colfax didn't give a specific timeline, he did say there are discussions happening right now about where there could be room for flexibility to ease restrictions.
“As we look at things right now, I think we're cautiously optimistic and we'll be looking at possible relaxation of indoor masking rules. I don't have anything to share specifically at this point but we certainly are assessing the situation,” Dr. Colfax said. “First in places where there's lower risk of contact where there's a lower density of people to start with and perhaps a gradual ongoing relaxation depending on where our cases are."
He says it all depends on what the numbers continue to tell us and right now they're looking very good.
The 7-day average of infections in the city and county of San Francisco is 96 -- about a third of what case rates looked like at the beginning of August when San Francisco hit a peak of 309.
Hospitalizations are also drastically down as vaccinations remain high.
“Good news is we continue to go in the right direction and right now we're at about 11 cases per 100,000 and even more importantly we have a vaccination rate, we're at 82% of people eligible who are vaccinated,” Dr. Colfax said.
Meanwhile, infectious disease specialist at UCSF Dr. Monica Gandhi says San Francisco could in theory nix its indoor mask mandate now according to CDC guidelines and recommendations.
“If we're going by CDC guidelines we are actually the only state per their strict guidelines that all restrictions with masks indoors could be dropped so they're really clear that it has to do with the vaccination rate and community transmission rate. We're at moderate throughout the state but that's averaging it out. We're really low in San Francisco. 2% test positivity rate and again people who test have symptoms so we're really in that category where we could drop the mask mandate by all federal parameters,” Dr. Gandhi said.
Vaccination rates may continue to jump even higher in the city as children ages 5 to 11 could be eligible for shots as soon as next month.
In the meantime, we'll have to wait for direction from the Department of Public Health on what comes from those discussions of easing some indoor mask restrictions.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3ukdCKa
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