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San Francisco Shuts Down Indoor Dining as COVID-19 Cases Rise

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Tuesday that the city is reversing course on reopening some businesses because of a recent uptick in coronavirus cases.

Starting Saturday, the city will once again mandate restaurants to halt all indoor dining service. Gyms and movie theaters must reduce indoor capacity to either 25% or a maximum of 50 people at a time — down from 100 — whichever is less.

City officials are also hitting pause on plans to further reopen high schools; currently, only some private high schools in the city have resumed in-person classes. However, schools that are already open can remain so, and elementary and middle schools can still proceed with their reopening plans.

“The hard choices that we make now will help make things better for us in the future,” Breed said at a press briefing. “We have to continue to make the hard choices.”

In late October, San Francisco became the first large urban county in California to be included in the state's lowest-risk "yellow tier" category, signifying “minimal” spread of the virus.

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But COVID-19 cases have increased by 250% since early October, said Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco’s health director. In the past two weeks alone, he said, the rate of infection has gone from 3.7 cases per 100,000 people to 9 cases per 100,000.

“The spread of the virus is aggressive and threatening,” he said.

Colfax added that it is not yet known if the state will move San Francisco back to a higher-risk tier, but said the city is moving to act quickly on its own to stem the increase in infections.

“We know how to beat back this virus, San Francisco,” he said. “We've done it twice. Let's come together, dig deeper and do it a third time.”

— Monica Lam (@monicazlam)

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