San Francisco leaders cheer reopening as COVID-19 cases fall

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco will begin reopening more parts of its economy starting Wednesday, including indoor dining, movie theaters and gyms, an upbeat Mayor London Breed announced as California gave seven counties the go-ahead thanks to declining rates of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

“This is the beginning of a great time in San Francisco, you save money not buying those plane tickets to go other places. You can enjoy your city, right here right now,” Breed said under blue skies from Pier 39, an area popular with tourists in picturesque Fisherman’s Wharf.

The announcement came nearly a year after the San Francisco Bay Area imposed the nation’s first lockdown, shuttering thousands of businesses and forcing residents indoors.

San Francisco, with a population of 900,000 before the pandemic, has among the lowest case and death rates in the country, with more than 34,000 cases since the start of the pandemic and 422 deaths.

City fiscal analysts remarked on how residents have stayed at home more so than people in other California cities and even other equally strict Bay Area counties, contributing to good public health but also a sour economy.

Most of the state is still limited to outdoor dining and museums, including heavily populated Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties in the south.

San Francisco, Santa Clara and Napa counties in the Bay Area join four other counties in moving out from under the state’s most restrictive rules, which among other things allows indoor dining rooms and movie theaters to reopen at 25% capacity or up to 100 people and gyms and yoga studios to open at 10% capacity. Museums, zoos and aquariums can open indoors at 25% capacity.

While some sectors were allowed to reopen after case rates dropped in...