COVID: Restaurants, Gyms Getting Ready For Red Tier Status In San Mateo County
BURLINGAME (KPIX) - Many Bay Area counties could move into California's less restrictive COVID-19 tier as early as Tuesday.
San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin counties will likely move from the purple to the red tier. The change will have a serious impact on businesses and indoor dining.
Inside Burlingame's Sapore Italiano, dinner preps were underway on Monday, with the possibility of serving to a much larger crowd on the horizon.
UPDATE: Marin and San Mateo Counties Move into Red Tier; San Francisco Still in Purple
Owner Elio D'Urzo says a capacity of 25 percent for indoor dining would be a welcome addition to the outdoor setup and takeout he's been handling.
"I do my own delivery, we make fresh pasta, we sell wine, we sell a lot of stuff. The restaurant become a supermarket," said D'Urzo.
A move to red tier could also re-open gyms at 10 percent indoor capacity. It's an industry hurting with the lack of January resolution sign-ups and long pandemic closures.
"It's better news for all of those employees that got laid off through the pandemic. We will be able to hire some of those folks back," said Dave Karraker, co-owner of MX3 Fitness.
"I'm bullishly optimistic that we're gonna find our way out of this," said San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa.
San Mateo County has already delivered 175,000 vaccine doses which gives Canepa hope that this re-opening might just be permanent.
"We've been here before, but now we're here with vaccinations."
The weekly COVID-19 case average in San Francisco is 92, compared to 307 a month ago.
Stanford infectious disease specialist Dr. Anne Liu says even with new variants around, the dropping case rates and rising vaccine numbers make this level of re-opening safe.
"There's really only so much that closing business and preventing people from being in schools is going to prevent transmission in those settings, so really what we need to do is stick to the basics," Dr. Liu told KPIX5 via Zoom.
At Sapore, the plexiglass table dividers have been up for nearly a year now and Elio is eager to see more of his customers.
"Friday and Saturday, it's going to be very hard to limit the 25 percent. We need to do it. It's better 25 percent than nothing."