San Francisco will loosen its mask mandate on certain indoor spaces on Oct. 15, and the county along with seven of its neighbors will remove local mandates once they reach low COVID case and hospitalization rates and at least 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated, according to a set of criteria released by health officers Thursday morning.
None of the eight Bay Area counties with indoor mask mandates are currently hitting the benchmarks they set for lifting those orders. In fact, most of them may not meet their own criteria for many more weeks, and it’s possible the mask mandates will remain largely in place through the rest of the year.
San Francisco will partially lift its mask mandate a week from Friday, assuming local COVID cases and hospitalizations remain stable or decline over the next week. At that time, people may stop wearing masks at some indoor spaces that require proof of vaccination — including gyms, offices and places that host small gatherings — as long as no children under 12 are present and other ventilation and safety measures are in place.
Piper Lind wears a mask and decorated costume while welcoming masked customers to Cliff’s Variety on Castro Street in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleRestaurants and bars are not included in San Francisco’s Oct. 15 timeline, even though vaccination is generally required at those venues for people 12 and up — which means that, in theory, people should mask up when they are not actively eating or drinking.
The criteria announced Thursday apply to Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties, which all reinstated indoor mask mandates in August amid the delta surge. Solano County did not put in place a local mandate.
The state mandate that requires masking in schools and health care settings remains in place indefinitely. Unvaccinated people must continue to wear masks in virtually all public indoor settings, in accordance with state rules.
“I’m excited that we’re once again at a place where we can begin easing the mask requirements, which is the direct result of the fact that we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, our cases have fallen, and our residents have done their part to keep themselves and those around them safe,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed in a statement.
Bay Area health officials have come under increasing pressure to ease the local mask mandates in recent weeks, as cases began to decline after the summer surge. Statewide, mandates had been lifted on June 15 when California reopened its economy.
“I think the time is right to life the mask mandate using a phased approach,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert with UCSF, prior to the announcement. “It doesn’t mean we have a mask bonfire on Ocean Beach. I think what people want are metrics to follow to see a pathway out of where we are now.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article said gave an incorrect figure for the number of weeks that need to pass after children 5-11 are vaccinated, which is one element of the potential mask-lifting criteria. It is eight weeks.
The eight Bay Area counties with indoor mask mandates must reach moderate levels of transmission as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and low hospitalization rates as defined by the local health officer. In counties that haven’t reached 80% of the population vaccinated, the orders may be lifted eight weeks after children ages 5-11 are granted access to vaccines.
All of the counties currently have “substantial” or “high” levels of local transmission as defined by the CDC. But case rates and hospitalizations have dropped significantly from the peak of the delta surge.
Though the Bay Area has had better vaccine uptake than almost anywhere else in the country, all of the counties fall short of the 80% vaccination goal; a few are over 75% of the total population vaccinated. In most counties, it will be next to impossible to reach 80% without vaccinating young children.
They can lift the mandates eight weeks after young children become eligible for vaccination, but that likely won’t happen until late this month or sometime in November. Pfizer on Thursday asked federal authorities for emergency approval of its vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds, and the review process could take many weeks.
“We’re hopeful at the very latest, it would be right after the holidays, early part of January” that San Francisco would reach the vaccination goal and more widely lift its mask mandate, said Dr. Susan Philip the city’s health officer.
“It is possible throughout the region different counties may end up hitting some of these criteria at different times. If there are counties that have fewer kids, they may reach their 80% sooner than we would,” Philip said. “We’re not going to be as protected as we an be in the city until we have kids vaccinated, particularly the kids who are out and about every day and going into classrooms.”
When Bay Area counties, excluding Solano, mandated masking in all public indoor settings regardless of vaccination status at the beginning of August, health officers told the public it was a “temporary” measure. The goal was to stem the rapid rise of cases and hospitalizations tied to the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus.
But before now, the health departments had not announced clear benchmarks for phasing out the new and reinstated COVID protocols.
“The goal of the criteria is to ensure that conditions are in place that will allow us to safely lift the restrictions,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the Marin County health officer, in a statement. “The mask requirement played an important role in gaining control the fourth wave. Still, our biggest asset is vaccinations. High vaccination rates will allow us to continue to ease restrictions safely, while providing greater protection for our community.”
Dave Karraker, co-owner of MX3 Fitness and spokesman for the SF Fitness Studio Coalition, which represent nearly 100 neighborhood gyms, called San Francisco’s relaxed mandate “unbelievably good news for the fitness industry.”
The mask mandate for the gyms has hurt the industry in two ways, he says. First, it kept customers away due comfort — “nobody likes doing cardio with a mask on,” he said. Second, it gave people the impression that gyms were as risky as a crowded nightclub on the weekends.
To that second point, he said, gym owners are hoping city leaders will go a step further and initiate a public relations campaign to make sure residents know that working out, in a gym full of vaccinated individuals is safe.
“It’s not enough to just lift the mandate,” he said. “The city has done a great deal of harm by not clearly communicating why they’re taking these actions.”
Shannon Boughn, the owner of 17th Street Athletic Club in the Mission District and a member of the coalition, says she’ll stop requiring masks as soon as the mandate lifts.
She estimates reinstating the mandate earlier this summer cost her gym around 10% to 20% of their regular clients — though, she says, the new delta variant likely played a part in that as well. “It’s just too claustrophobic for them — it wasn’t worth it for them.”
The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which represents San Francisco restaurants, said in a statement that while many restaurants will be “disappointed” at not being included in the Oct. 15 mask rule easing, the easing of rules at offices was nonetheless welcome, particularly for establishments downtown.
“Our restaurants, bars, and cafes in San Francisco’s urban center – including the Financial district — need foot traffic and office workers downtown in order to survive,” the association said.
Chronicle staff writer Ryan Kost contributed to this report.
Aidin Vaziri and Erin Allday are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com eallday@sfchronicle.com