San Francisco
COVID Purple Tier: San Francisco Businesses Prepare For Restrictive Purple Tier
San Francisco, California, Saturday nights are some of the busiest for Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in North Beach. That will likely change when San Francisco moves back to the Purple Tier.
With new COVID cases soaring, positivity rates rising and hospitalizations increasing, state health officials moved both San Francisco and San Mateo counties from the Red Tier to the most restrictive Purple Tier on Saturday.
Among the new restrictions is a ban on indoor dining and a stay at home curfew order that begins at 10 p.m.
“A lot of our business is going to be until 10 o clock, and later, we have a lot of dates, and stuff like that. And unfortunately this does dig completely into our regular dinner time,” said Tony’s Assistant GM Ro Hart.
Currently, Tony’s allows guests to linger well past closing time at 10 pm.
“Every minute, we lose money, so the less time we have at night, especially to get everybody out by 10, we’re going to have to close earlier than that,” Hart added.
“When we don’t have healthy communities, we don’t have healthy economic communities,” said San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa.
Canepa says people are getting too comfortable around their family and friends.
“The spread takes place according to our health officer, in those social settings more than it does at restaurants, more than it does at malls, and there in lies the problem. We all have what’s called social responsibility,” he said.
In San Francisco, there are currently 900 COVID cases diagnosed per week, compared to 217 diagnosed the week of October 12th.
“I think it’s really important that we all continue to keep focus on the biggest picture and the safety of everybody,” said Nicole Straight of Marin. “And you know we do what we have to do keep our state and our country safe.”
“Everyone – it’s just their actions have reactions, and we’re going back into the purple for a reason. So I mean it’s frustrating for sure, but you kind of have to do it to try to protect everyone else,” said Abby Straight of Berkeley.