Early indicators on transferring towards Bay Space’s post-pandemic life

A clearer picture of post-pandemic life, one that Bay Area health officials increasingly have hinted at since the omicron wave began slowing a couple of weeks ago, is starting to take shape.

Formal public health restrictions like indoor mask requirements and vaccine verification to get into certain indoor spaces will likely ease. Universal contact tracing will be pared back to focus on the highest-risk settings only.

In public remarks Tuesday, local health officials started to spell out some details on what to expect in the coming weeks once omicron infections subside. Omicron now is on the descent, though still at high case levels that are falling more slowly than they rose. Across the Bay Area and state, case rates and test positivity are steadily dropping, and hospitalizations are starting to follow. As of Monday, new daily cases in the nine Bay Area counties fell to a seven-day average of 132 per 100,000 people — half of what it was two weeks ago. It’s too soon to tell what death rates will do because of the lag between new cases and deaths.

“It’s more like getting closer and closer to the new normal, versus closing the book on COVID,” Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss told the county’s supervisors on Tuesday. “In terms of the things that have been most disruptive to people’s daily lives, those will continue to fall away, hopefully not to return.”

If the omicron downward trajectory holds, and the latest figures Tuesday showed the trend continuing — the region can expect emergency pandemic measures to transition to an endemic response, which means a cautious loosening of official restrictions such as easing vaccination requirements in some settings and — much like San Francisco did Tuesday in dropping indoor mask mandates for vaccinated and boosted stable groups in gyms and offices — beginning to pull back rules on face coverings.

Contra Costa County, for instance, is looking into its health order that requires people to be fully vaccinated to enter restaurants, acting health officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli said Tuesday at a Board of Supervisors meeting.

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If Contra Costa ends up easing that requirement, it would be similar to what San Francisco is doing. As of Tuesday, the city is allowing unvaccinated people to dine indoors as long as they show a negative antigen test result from within the last day or PCR test from the previous two days. Previously, San Francisco required all indoor diners to be fully vaccinated with no option to “test out” of the requirement.

Bay Area counties soon will probably have to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to lift local indoor mask mandates. California officials are expected to drop the statewide indoor mask mandate Feb. 15, Tzvieli said, and Bay Area counties will likely take a county-by-county approach on whether to follow suit locally.

Prior to the omicron wave, Bay Area counties weighed specific criteria for such mask action — if eight weeks or more had passed after vaccines became available to kids 5 to 11, or if a county had reached and remained in the CDC’s “moderate” tier for Transmission and had low and stable hospitalizations. Going forward, the focus will be more on hospital capacity, Tzvieli said.

“Over the next two weeks we’re going to be looking at numbers closely, we’re going to figure out the best way to align our own masking order with the state,” he said. “The most important driver for us right now is less the case numbers and more how the health care systems are doing. We want to make sure everyone in the community, when they go to the hospital, is able to seek high quality care.”

Counties that have more hospital capacity to withstand a potential bump in cases that might follow lifting of restrictions may be more comfortable easing masking than those with less hospital capacity, he said.

“I expect there to be some diversity,” he said. “I suspect most will lift within a month of the state but I’m not sure exactly when. I think it’ll be very county by county.”

Tuesday’s discussions followed Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody’s statements a day earlier that Santa Clara County’s public health department plans to scale back its role in vaccination and testing, ceding those services to people’s regular health care providers. This would mark a return to pre-pandemic expectations, since providers have traditionally handled those services for most residents

Moss, of Alameda County, emphasized that with case rates and hospitalizations still high, it’s too soon to start paring back many restrictions. But with talk of the post-omicron state “in the air,” he wanted to open the discussion.

Despite prospects for dropping mask requirements, residents should still consider ways to protect themselves and the community, he said, echoing recent emphasis from other health officials on the need to rely on people’s individual choices to stay safe, and less on government restrictions.

“Individuals, families and institutions will all need to manage ongoing COVID risk and make the choices that are best for them,” Moss said. “Even if (masks are) not required, they’re going to be a good thing for people to use, particularly if they’re really sick, for the foreseeable future.”

Chronicle staff writer Erin Allday contributed to this report.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho