By Dan Whitcomb
(Reuters) – The mayor of San Francisco on Friday said she and political leaders across the Bay Area were imposing new lockdown orders and business restrictions in the face of a surge in COVID-19 infections.
Mayor London Breed, a first-term Democrat, said she was unwilling to wait for a statewide clamp-down announced by California Governor Gavin Newsom, set to be triggered region-by-region based on hospital intensive-care unit admissions.
“What we’re seeing now is a spike unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the pandemic,” Breed said in announcing the restrictions during a live-streamed news conference.
The new rules apply across five Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara and San Francisco, as well as the city of Berkeley.
Breed said that 16,208 infections have been documented in San Francisco since the pandemic began. The city has recorded 162 deaths.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Leslie Adler and Will Dunham)
