Strict Social Distancing: How Are "Shelter in Place" Orders Working in San Francisco?

Numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the U.S. and more local governments are imposing stricter social distancing rules. The strongest clampdown is in the Bay Area which has advised people to shelter in place. Similar orders were also just put in place in LA. Despite these rules, we continue to see many put and about. Erin Allday, health writer at the SF Chronicle, joins us for how it’s going a few days in and also how hospitals are prepping for a wave of coronavirus cases.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, March I'm Oscar Ramiras from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Numbers of confirmed COVID nineteen cases continued to rise in
the US, and more local governments are imposing stricter social
distancing rules. The strongest clampdown is in the Bay Area,
which has advised people to shelter in place. Despite these rules,

(00:22):
we continue to see many out and about. Aaron all
Day Health right at the San Francisco Chronicle joins us
for how it's going a few days in and also
how hospitals are prepping for a wave of coronavirus cases.
Thanks for joining us, Aaron, thanks for having me so
the Bay Area. There's six counties that have issued a
shelter in place order. This is only on essential businesses,

(00:44):
but it really is the strictest measure in the United
States so far. It began Tuesday at midnight. It's supposed
to be in place until April seven. So we're a
few days in now. Aaron, tell us how it's going
so far, and then tell us what the restrictions are exactly,
just so everybody can understand what's going on. So I'll
tell you about the restrictions. First of all, it's defined

(01:06):
as everybody's told to stay home, stay away from others
as much as they can. You're allowed to go out
for what's called essential business, which at this point is
fairly loosely defined, and that people um can go grocery shopping. Um,
they can go out for home supplies, so toilet paper,
cleaning products, you know, diapers, whatever you might need in
your home, but also auto body shops, veterinarians, hardware stores,

(01:30):
lots of places kind of fit that criteria of what's
considered essential. I will say, for now, I think that
there's room for these measures to tighten up even further
if we're not seeing sort of the improvement in case
counts that that folks are looking for. But for now,
that's where we're at as far as the restrictions. We
are a couple of days into it, and you know,
it seems like people are are taking this seriously. I

(01:53):
think we're still feeling out the boundaries here. People are
still kind of figuring out what's appropriate and what's not.
You know, there's a lot people that are going outside
right now because they're encouraged to go outside. It's not
healthy to just be in all the time. But you know,
you get enough people outside in one spot and and
it sort of defeats the purpose of social distancing. So
I think some things like that we're kind of adjusting

(02:13):
to and and there may be you know, changes with
that over time. Watching some of the TV coverage and all,
they showed a few images of people out about, jogging,
walking and all that stuff, and you're right, there was
a lot of people out there. So it's tough to
get a handle on that. And you know, it's not
a full lockdown yet, like you said, but we could
be getting there at some point. The US has reported

(02:35):
at least a hundred and sixty five debats over eleven
thousand cases across all fifty states now and obviously that's
subject to change. It's changing so fast. But yeah, it's
tough to adjust to all of that. What about the
homeless population because with shelter in place, obviously some of
these people don't have anywhere to go. What's the ruling
on how they should be operating in the city. The

(02:55):
word is that from the orders that that they should
seek shelter if at all possible, which of course is is.
You know a lot of people really took issue with
that because obviously, if they could get shelter, they would
be in shelter. Um. I know that there are efforts
to you know, arrange for hotel, to arrange for RVs,
to arrange for places, you know, temporary shelters for those
folks to go, you know, where they can have some separation,

(03:18):
because frankly, even people who have some housing like in
single room occupancy spaces, those aren't necessarily safe either because
they're sharing bathrooms. Um, you have a lot of people
in a very very close quarters. So there's definitely a
lot of work that's going into figuring that out right
now and again finding sort of short term solutions for
where people can safely shelter. But you know, I think

(03:39):
that that's just that's another work in progress. We've been
talking a lot about testing and how as as we
get a handle on this and we are able to
test more people, we're going to see this wave of numbers.
As I mentioned, we went over the ten thousand mark,
over eleven thousand mark. How are the Bay Area hospitals
preparing for a possible wave of cases. Obviously not everybody

(04:01):
gets the most severe type of symptoms. But this is
what we're all prepping for. How how are the hospitals
handling this? So they're definitely in full preparation mode right now.
Folks I talked to it sort of a mixed response
of what they're seeing right now. It's still sort of
feels like to them like an elevated flu season. So
they're definitely seeing a lot of cases, a lot of patients,

(04:22):
but not too much at this point. But they're all anticipating,
definitely bracing for that to get worse, and so they're
already doing things like several hospitals UM and doctor's offices
to have set up outdoor triage areas, so where they
invite patients by by doctor's orders to come by, stay
in their cars, get sort of checked out by a
nurse or a doctor, um, you know, if they're reporting

(04:44):
respiratory symptoms, and then told, you know, if they need
to come into the hospital for more care or if
they can go home and kind of safely isolate there.
The point of that is supposed to keep those folks
out of hospitals where they could potentially infect others if
they do in fact have COVID nineteen UM but also,
you know, things like so that a nurse who has
seen somebody who's sitting in their car doesn't have to

(05:05):
change out, you know, their face mask for every single patient.
They can reuse that. And you know, that's a big
thing that's happening in hustles right now, is they're already
anticipating or maybe even facing short supplies of really critical
protective equipment, and so they're you know, they're reusing face masks,
they're limiting the circumstances when staff can use face masks.

(05:26):
I think that's one of the big issues right now,
is fearing for the supply chain and the long term.
Kaiser Permanente, which is a big provider here, told me
a couple of days ago that they've stopped pretty much
all of their preventive care, which is a huge part
of Kaiser's kind of service that they do things like
mammograms and pat smears and stuff, and they've just they're
they're knocking all that off for the time being, just
because they need to have all hands on deck for

(05:47):
potential um COVID nineteen. Yeah, I mean, that's one of
the hardest parts about it, is just preparing for the
potential cases. You know, they're not there yet. The severity
is not there yet, and it's just tough to you know,
be ready and in all of the equipment and supplies
that you need. Any word on ventilators, because I know
that's been a big thing that a lot of people
have been talking about. We're ordering a bunch of through

(06:09):
the federal government, but they're in the Bay Area specifically.
Do we have any sense of how prepared we are
with ventilators? You know, my impression is that the Bay
Area is actually a little bit better prepared than a
lot of other parts of the country. And I think
some of the concerns is that we may be called
upon to kind of help out with other places, um
as other places kind of run out. But it's a
concern everywhere. I mean, it's part of the problem with this,

(06:30):
is you pointed out, is we don't we don't know
how bad this is going to get. And so you know,
right now it's feeling okay, and in the hospital life
talked to say that they have a good a good
stock of those that they can rely on, but it
doesn't take much to hit capacity on that. And that's
that's the big fears that we're going to reach this
kind of you know, these cases are going to surge
and we are going to run out and something like ventilators.

(06:52):
You can't just you know, order up more of those.
So I think that they're trying to do that now,
They're trying to prepare for that. But again, the berries
those a little bit better shape than some places, is
my impression. Um, so we may not be kind of
at the front of the line for that. Aaron all Day,
health writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks for having me. This has

(07:14):
been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's
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