COVID
San Francisco has reached "benign" state of COVID
Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios
Cases of COVID-19 are on the decline in San Francisco, but as the country enters its fourth year of living with the virus, a local health expert says people shouldn't get complacent.
- Bob Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Axios that federal discussions on annual COVID-19 vaccinations could help with increasing vaccination rates here and elsewhere.
UCSF sees increase of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Positive test rates for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases have more than doubled at University of California, San Francisco in the past month, hitting 5%, the hospital's chair of medicine, Bob Wachter, tweeted Friday.
Why it matters: The implication, according to Wachter, is that about 1 in 20 people in SF who feel well would currently test positive for COVID.
"Modest surge" of COVID-19 expected this winter, UCSF expert says
COVID-19 testing site at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San Francisco. Photo: Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Rates of COVID-19 in San Francisco have been low recently, and while the emergence of new variants could bring an uptick in cases this winter, local experts don't expect a massive spike.
Flashback: Last winter, the city, like the rest of the country, was rocked by the BA.5 Omicron variant, causing cases and hospitalizations to skyrocket in December and January.
Dreamforce boosted San Francisco tourism
Attendees outside the 2022 Dreamforce conference in SF. Photo: Marlena Sloss/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Dreamforce, Salesforce's takeover of downtown San Francisco, did its part in bringing tourists to the city.
Driving the news: Hotel occupancy in downtown San Francisco was 95.1% for the first two days of the tech conference, according to a report from data analytics firm STR.
Census data confirms San Francisco's WFH shift
Nearly 46% of people in San Francisco primarily worked from home in 2021 — up from 7% in 2019, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
By the numbers: San Francisco had the third-highest percentage of residents working from home among major U.S. cities.
OpenTable reservations have yet to rebound in SF
Restaurant reservations made in San Francisco via OpenTable are down 34% this month compared to July 2019, recent data shows.
The big picture: A variety of data points indicate San Francisco has yet to rebound from the pandemic, despite the city lifting many of its COVID-19-related restrictions.
Push for a 4am "last call" defeated
Oasis bar in SoMa. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
An effort to keep bars open later in San Francisco, and other cities, was defeated in the state Assembly on Wednesday.
Context: The bill, written by state Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Matt Haney, would have allowed watering holes in San Francisco, Palm Springs and West Hollywood to serve drinks until 4am on weekends and 3am on weekdays.
71% of California kids have had COVID-19
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
About 71% of kids in California between the ages of 6 months and 17 years have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, compared to about 80% of kids nationwide, according to recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why it matters: The latest BA.5 subvariant of Omicron is now the dominant strain of the coronavirus in the U.S., and it's the most transmissible we've seen since the start of the pandemic, Axios' Tina Reed writes.
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