5 years since COVID: How the pandemic reshaped the Bay Area

Axios

07-03-2025

It's been five years since the coronavirus outbreak overtook the world and changed our lives forever.
Flashback: Though local cities and counties didn't issue shelter-in-place orders until mid-March 2020, the virus is thought to have been circulating in the region as early as January.
The CDC announced the Bay Area's first confirmed case — and the U.S.'s seventh — on Jan. 31. The Santa Clara County man had recently traveled to Wuhan, the center of the outbreak.
On Feb. 25, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency to expedite resources and personnel ahead of the city's first case. Roughly a week later, the city confirmed its first two infections.
About 7 million people were placed under shelter-in-place mandates across seven Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, on March 15.
Friction point: Though some viewed the measures as unnecessary at the time, studies later found that local officials' early intervention helped prevent an estimated 188,000 hospitalizations and 19,000 deaths in the region's largest cities.
Soon, curbside pick-up became the norm, on-camera work etiquette became the subject of debate and toilet paper roll-hoarding became a widespread hobby.
Yes, but: Fear surrounding the virus and its origins led to an increase in violence against Asian Americans, with anti-AAPI hate crimes jumping 567% in San Francisco from 2020 to 2021.
The pandemic also disproportionately harmed marginalized communities. The city's Black, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and Asian American communities all had higher death rates than their share of the population.
The big picture: Five years later, we're still grappling with learning loss, downtown recovery, homelessness and more.
But our commitment to masking, vaccinating and following public health orders helped make San Francisco one of the safest large U.S. cities when it came to COVID deaths.