San Francisco Formally Mandates Proof of Vaccination for Indoor Eating
After the recent mask mandate, rumors began to circulate about whether or not San Francisco will introduce a vaccine mandate for indoor eating. Well, guests, it’s happening: At a press conference Thursday morning outside the only Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach, officials announced that San Francisco will require proof of vaccination for indoor dining as of Aug. 20. So when do you want to eat? At a restaurant or a drink in a San Francisco bar, you better get ready to proudly show your vaccination card.
“We know that in order for our city to recover and thrive from the pandemic, we need to use the best method of fighting COVID-19 and that is vaccines,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “Many companies in San Francisco are already pioneering the need to provide proof of vaccination for their customers because they care about the health of their employees, their customers, and this city. This mandate builds on their leadership role and will help us meet the challenges ahead and keep our business open. Vaccines are our way out of the pandemic and our way back to a life in which we can be safe together. ”
San Francisco is the second city in the country to have a vaccination mandate after New York City, and is the first and only city and county in the Bay Area to do so. That announcement comes only from the SF Department of Public Health, not the broader Bay Area coalition that has worked together in the past. The mandate applies not only to restaurants and bars, but also to fitness studios, clubs, theaters and other indoor event spaces.
Specifically, guests must provide proof of vaccination with a physical vaccination card, photo of their vaccination card, or QR code obtained through the government website, and restaurants and bars must verify this with photo ID. Both doses of the vaccine are required (unlike New York, where only a first dose is required). Negative COVID tests will not be accepted. The mandate does not apply to children under the age of 12 who are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine, and does not apply to those who collect takeaway orders. And while guests are required to provide proof of vaccination from August 20th, restaurants and bars have to confirm the vaccination status of their employees by October 13th.
“At this stage of the pandemic, we need to optimize the vaccines’ powerful tool to protect ourselves while we fully reopen our stores,” said Dr. Grant Colfax from the SF Department of Health in a statement. “The past few weeks have shown the importance of having all beneficiaries vaccinated when we resume normal activities.”
New York became the first city in the United States to announce a mandate to vaccinate indoor food from August 16, hands. The SF Bar Owner Alliance has issued a statement recommending that bars be screened for evidence of vaccinations from July 29th, and a growing number of restaurants and bars have volunteered to do so. But this mandate makes it official: now all restaurants and bars have to double-card.
It’s a direct response to the highly contagious Delta variant that continues to surge in the Bay Area. San Francisco is currently reporting 247 new COVID cases per day on a seven-day average, back to the levels we saw during the vacation spike, which then resulted in a full lockdown. The good news is that 85 percent of San Francisco residents ages 12 and over have had at least one vaccination. Health officials continue to urge everyone to get vaccinated as the unvaccinated are at greatest risk of hospitalization and death, and to require masks indoors because, although rare, even vaccinated people can still get and spread the disease.
Restaurant and bar owners have mixed feelings about switching to a vaccine mandate for indoor dining. The current mask mandate is easy to check at a glance, but “A vaccination mandate would be the next level,” Pearl 6101’s Marialisa Lopez told Eater SF a few weeks ago. “That would be a lot more complicated to enforce.” According to a survey by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, 66 percent of restaurant owners said they would support an indoor mask mandate. But even if they did, it is more complicated in practice as restaurants may have to train staff, monitor multiple entrances, and manage customer disputes. “Unless the city does[s] It is a mandate, then you leave it to endangered restaurant employees to face potentially volatile situations themselves, ”said chef Pim Techamuanvivit of Nari and Kin Khao at the time to Eater. Now that the city has stepped in, we’ll see how it works in practice.
