SFGATE

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It’s Time to Stop Traveling

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This is as hard for me to write as it is for travelers to hear: It’s time to consider canceling or postponing your nonessential holiday trips. Normally at this time of year, I would be writing about strategies to deal with the impending holiday crowds or how the two weeks after Thanksgiving or New Years are the cheapest times of year to travel, the so-called “dead weeks” when demand, and therefore prices, hit annual lows. I’d be preparing for my annual holiday visit to Atlanta to see my family, or a “bleisure” trip to New York City to see the […]

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‘SF Readies to Add More COVID Restrictions

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed provided a sobering update on the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday and said the city will need to take “more restrictive action” this week to temper the explosion of coronavirus cases. New health protocols could come as early as tomorrow. Breed said the city is reviewing a new public health order implemented by Santa Clara County on Monday and is considering similar measures, including limits on retail capacity and a more stringent travel quarantine. Restrictions on gatherings are also in discussion. “Let me be clear, it’s not good,” the mayor said. “Cases are spiking. Hospitalizations are increasing. Our infection […]

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Crews Attack ‘the Last, Most Difficult Part’ North Bay Fires

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Multiple wildfires are burning in the greater North Bay. Cal Fire is referring to them collectively as the LNU Lightning Complex. LNU stands for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit, and you can find the latest evacuation info here. A map of the fire is available here. The biggest fires are: Hennessey Fire (merged with Gamble, Green, Aetna, Markley, Morgan, Spanish and Round): Napa County, 299,763 acres, 33% contained Walbridge Fire (merged with Stewarts): Sonoma County, west of Healdsburg, 54,923 acres, 17% contained Meyers Fire: Sonoma County, north of Jenner, 2,360 acres, 97% contained — The LNU Lightning Complex in California’s Wine Country saw minimal spread overnight, growing […]

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No Bay Area County is Close to Getting off State Watch List

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During a Monday press conference, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced changes to the state’s COVID-19 monitoring list for the first time since a data glitch delayed accurate case counts across the state. There are six different indicators that can land a county on the watch list: 1. A seven-day average of fewer than 150 tests conducted per 100,000 residents 2. More than 100 cases per 100,000 residents over 14 days 3. More than 25 cases per 100,000 residents over 14 days AND a seven-day average of test positivity over 8% 4. A 10% increase in the three-day-average for hospitalizations 5. Having less […]

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California Health Care Workers Comprise almost 10% COVID-19 cases

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The California Department of Public Health provided new data on the state’s positive COVID-19 tests on Wednesday, and provided the striking piece of information that health care workers make up nearly 10 percent of the state’s confirmed cases. At the time of the report’s publication, there were 16,957 confirmed cases in the state, and 1,651 involved health care workers. However, just 299 of health workers were known to have acquired the virus in a “health setting,” while 462 were exposed via travel, close contacts, or community transmission, and a whopping 890 cases are of unknown origin. “Since COVID-19 is moving rapidly within […]

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Here’s Why California’s Coronavirus Peak is still Projected for May.

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Despite encouraging signs that social distancing is working in California, where most residents are in their third week or more of sheltering at home, state officials are still projecting COVID-19 infections will peak in mid- to late May. The reason for that is not because social distancing is failing — it’s an intended consequence of shelter in place. Social distancing is not meant to end the coronavirus outbreak; it’s meant to slow it down until a vaccine is widely available. By “flattening the curve,” California health officials hoped to buy time, preventing the type of overloading of the health care system that’s […]

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Cell Phone Data Reveals which California Counties are Socially Distancing

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Want to know which California counties are evidently not doing a very good job of obeying the statewide shelter-in-place order that has been in effect for over a week now? The data company Unacast, a firm that collects cell phone location data for private companies, created an interactive map that shows which counties in California and beyond are correctly “socially distancing” by staying at home. Each county and state is graded on an A-F basis on the “change in average mobility,” or the decline in distance traveled since quarantine measures were first put in place. “To calculate the actual underlying social indexing […]