SF Bay area is still shut down because of a failure of the public health departments and the political leadership to fund them.
"Case counts and hospitalization reports, two key gauges of the status of the outbreak, have either stabilized or are starting to decline. That means counties are starting to slow or even stop the spread of the virus.
But testing in all six counties is far below the goals set for the region — in some places it needs to increase seven-fold to meet targets. Most of the counties do not yet have a strong enough contact tracing program to effectively prevent future outbreaks. And most, if not all, do not have a large enough stockpile of protective equipment to safeguard health care workers if the number of patients rises.
Without those key resources in place, the region can’t lift shelter-in-place orders, say public health and infectious disease experts."
"Public health officers said it’s possible they will loosen further restrictions before the end of the month. On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a briefing that the state could be “many days, not weeks” from lifting some shelter-in-place directives.
But those decisions depend on state and regional metrics moving in the right directions, and much of that progress is in the hands of public health authorities — to increase testing capacity, for example, and to hire workers to do labor-intensive contact tracing."
Added: This really irks me. We are like 15 to 20 weeks into this situation. The government public health departments established metrics at least 6 weeks ago. And we need to be increasing public capabilities in some areas still by 7 times?
Bay Area has 6 criteria for loosening coronavirus restrictions. Here’s where each county is now
