By Dan Hounsell, Senior Editor, Facility Market

The pandemic is far from over.

Just as restaurants, bars and movie theaters were starting to welcome back customers and offices were reopening to returning workers, new cases of the Delta variant outbreak are spreading nationwide, and hospitalizations are skyrocketing. Two California hospitals are at the epicenter of the new crisis.

At least 233 staff members at two major San Francisco hospitals, most of them fully vaccinated, tested positive for the coronavirus this month, and most, according to a hospital official, involved the highly contagious Delta variant, reports The New York Times.

Some of the cases were asymptomatic, most involved mild to moderate symptoms, and only two required hospitalization, officials said. About 75-80 percent of the more than 50 staff members infected at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital were fully vaccinated. The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center said in a statement that 153 of its 183 infected staff members had been fully vaccinated.

The statement from the UCSF Medical Center said two of the infected staff members required hospitalization. None of the infected staff members at San Francisco General have been hospitalized and most had mild to moderate symptoms. The asymptomatic cases were discovered through contact tracing.

On July 11, San Francisco ordered that workers in high-risk workplaces, including hospitals, be vaccinated by Sept. 15. The UCSF statement said the hospital was doubling down on efforts to protect staff,  including requiring all employees and trainees to comply with the new UC-systemwide Covid-19 vaccination mandate, with limited exceptions for medical or religious exemptions. Staff members at both hospitals have continued to wear personal protective equipment. But the number of staff infections reported in July is about as many as during the peak of the winter surge.