San Francisco city leaders, like many, are waiting to see how the omicron variant will behave.
But Hotel Via, like other businesses, says it isn’t waiting for the city to implement stricter rules -- they’re looking to stay ahead of the game.
Barbara Perzigian is hoping to stay ahead of the curve. That means they’re not getting lax on masks.
“We’re gonna continue to be the mask police,” she the general manager. “We are going to continue to employ all of the protocols that we developed ourselves … along with the ones we adopted from the Giants and MLB when this was their quarantine hotel.”
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In the past couple of months, Hotel Via has seen an uptick in corporate travel, and has hosted larger events. Meaning, solid business.
But all of that is now threatened by omicron.
“We were really looking forward to like maybe this is the start of something great but every time we’ve been looking forward to that, we bump into a different variant,” said Perzigian.
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City leaders say it’s too early to know if health orders will change because of the new variant, and a lot still needs to be learned.
“How much more transmissible could it be, does it make people sicker, and how do vaccines hold up against it?” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of health for the city and county of San Francisco.
Mayor London Breed agrees.
“We don't know when it will be in San Francisco, but the likelihood that it will be here is likely,” he said. “But we are paying very close attention to this.”
Heath experts stress that the best way to protect yourself against omicron, or any variant, Is to get vaccinated or boosted.
