Command staff among 10 infected members in past week
The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases among its members, with three captains and seven other staffers testing positive in the last week alone, according to officials. Ten of the 62 cases the department has recorded since last March were reported in the week ending Thursday, a trend that Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said is reflective of rising community spread in San Francisco. “Members of our department are members of the community,” Miyamoto said Thursday. “I don’t think we are concerned about a location being a hot spot… but I do know that we are concerned about the increase.” The Bay Area has been experiencing a third surge of the pandemic since November. Public health officials say new cases and hospitalizations in San Francisco have started to drop as of Monday, but remain up when compared to this summer. While the Sheriff’s Department declined to offer details about the assignments of each member who tested positive, citing privacy protections, Miyamoto confirmed one of the coronavirus-positive captains attended a swearing-in ceremony at City Hall for the new assistant sheriff on Jan.11. The invite-only ceremony gathered some 20 members of the command staff and the family of now Assistant Sheriff Tanzanika Carter.
