I wrote in our Day 13 post about the national pandemic guidelines being extended through April 30. Well, Bay Area health officials today extended their COVID-19 stay-at-home order through May 3. The announcement affects the six counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, as well as the city of Berkeley.

From the press release:

The new order adds some clarifying language around essential business and activities, as well as some new directives, including:

• Use of playgrounds, dog parks, public picnic areas, and similar recreational areas is prohibited. These areas must be closed to public use.

• Use of shared public recreational facilities such as golf courses, tennis and basketball courts, pools, and rock walls is prohibited. These facilities must be closed for recreational use.

• Sports requiring people to share a ball or other equipment must be limited to people in the same household.

• Requires essential businesses to develop a social distancing protocol before April 3.

• Most construction—residential and commercial—is prohibited.

• Funerals limited to no more than 10 people attending.

• Essential businesses expanded to include service providers that enable residential transactions (notaries, title companies, Realtors, etc.); funeral homes and cemeteries; moving companies, rental car companies and rideshare services that specifically enable essential activities.

• Essential businesses that continue to operate facilities must scale down operations to their essential component only.

This daily blog post series is our way of sharing our experience with you, our readers. We’ll talk about our daily routines, adjustments to working from home, recipes based on limited ingredients and any other topic that comes to mind. It’s our way of connecting with the “outside” world, while also giving us the opportunity to look within and reflect on what we’re experiencing and how we’re feeling. Thanks for your interest in sharing this journey with us. Stay tuned and be well.