San Francisco Eases Restrictions On Indoor Dining

The SFist reports:

On Tuesday, Mayor London Breed announced that the city and county of San Francisco had moved into the least restrictive “yellow” tier in the state’s reopening framework, becoming the first Bay Area county to do so since the four-color pandemic-response rating system was created two months ago.

And with this move, more businesses are going to get to reopen starting in two weeks, and restaurants will get to bring people indoors at 50% capacity — so long as virus numbers stay low.

It’s a good-news day in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic as San Francisco marks a long-awaited move into the yellow level of business reopening, marking minimal spread of the coronavirus — even if the city’s rules will remain more restrictive than the yellow tier allows elsewhere in the state.

Eater San Francisco reports:

Bars without food have a less hard-and-fast timeline, with a reopening for outdoor drinking planned “by mid-November,” city officials tell Eater SF. Indoor drinking at bars without food still won’t be allowed.

It’s a strategy that echoes the one the county has followed for indoor dining: Every time SF has moved up a stage in the state’s reopening categories, the dining world has lagged one step behind, operating at the “red” level when the county has been designated “orange,” and so on.

California’s COVID-19 positivity rate is at an all-time low, with a positivity rate of 2.4 percent. And San Francisco’s rates are some of the best in the region — and are definitely the best in the Bay Area.