New Jersey became the last state on Monday to stop or reverse the reopening of meals in indoor restaurants and bars due to growing cases of coronavirus, and Governor Phil Murphy announced on Twitter that the scenes of overcrowding statewide. ” THEY CANNOT CONTINUE. “
“We had planned to loosen the restrictions this week,” he said. “However, after # COVID19 spikes in other states driven, in part, by the return of indoor food, we have decided to postpone indoor food indefinitely,” he said.
The blunt message followed a series of similar announcements in Florida, Texas and California, where authorities ordered the bars closed amid record-setting case numbers in recent days. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Monday that he would decide in two days whether meals inland could resume in the country’s most populous city.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Restaurant Association have offered guidelines to the newly opened restaurants and bars, but in interviews on Monday, epidemiologists warned they don’t believe drink establishments should serve customers soon. .
“I am delighted that some of them are being closed,” said John Swartzberg, professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley. “I’m disappointed that they don’t close anymore. The reason I am delighted is because the greatest risk to people is being in a closed area for an extended period of time. Bars are a perfect setup for that. “
It can be difficult to stay socially distant, he said. It’s also difficult to drink with a mask, and the more you drink, the worse your judgment will be.
“They are preparing to harm themselves or others if they become infected,” he said.
In states where the number of cases increases, Swartzberg said the reopening should not only be frozen but reversed. “The whole process will be uneven: two steps forward, one step backward,” he said. The process should stay that way until things become safer again, or until drugs or a vaccine dramatically change the trajectory of the virus, he said.
The recent increase in cases has affected younger adults at higher rates, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In testimony to Congress last week, Fauci attributed this to a “pent-up urge” to leave after months of being confined to his home.
However, it is unclear how important bars have been in increasing case numbers in states like Florida, said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. But public health officials were clearly interpreting them as taxpayers, he said. In California, he added, that information is unclear.
John Bodnovich, executive director of American Beverage Licensees, a national bar business group, said there was no consensus among owners as to whether the closings were warranted.
“Some have voluntarily closed out of concern for their employees and their clients, while others have decided to remain open as they take further steps to protect staff and guests,” he said. “A lot depends on local circumstances.”
However, Bodnovich urged bar owners to follow local rules. In Texas and Florida, he said, authorities had applied closure measures.
In a pub that reopened in Los Angeles earlier this month, it was not necessary to enforce the law before it closed last week. The pub, Casey’s, said in a Facebook post on Friday that it had tried to reopen safely and responsibly. But after an employee tested positive for the virus, a specialized team was hired for a “medical-grade deep clean.” All staff will be screened for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and Casey will remain closed until further notice, according to the statement.
The risk of eating in a restaurant is not much different from drinking in a bar if both are indoors, said Art Reingold, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He pointed to a recent study from China that traced a group of positive cases to a restaurant in Guangzhou, a city more than 600 miles south of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak began.
The researchers, from the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 10 people from three families who sat at different tables at the same time on January 24 had probably been infected by a person sitting with one of the families. The person showed no symptoms at the time, but the family had recently been to Wuhan. The researchers concluded that the virus was likely transmitted by air conditioning.
“To prevent the spread of the virus in restaurants, we recommend increasing the distance between tables and improving ventilation,” they said.
The National Restaurant Association, which represents half a million businesses in the United States, said in a statement that it is encouraging restaurants to follow its reopening guide, a 10-page brochure available on its website, along with federal guidelines. , state and local authorities that urge social distancing and other measures.
Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Disaster Preparedness Center, said that if restaurants reopen, kitchen staff, servers and other employees should be tested daily. “We also need strict rules for eating outdoors,” he said. “Servers must wear masks and gloves.”
But Redlener said he did not think it was “feasible” for bars or restaurants to reopen until next year.
In New Jersey, Marilou Halvorsen, president of the state Restaurant and Hospitality Association, said restaurant owners had spent thousands of dollars ordering food, re-hiring employees and working on safety practices before being able to reopen Thursday. The governor-imposed freeze, he said, “will cause even more restaurants to fail.”
“We shouldn’t sentence an entire industry because of unprepared states and the bad acts of some bar operators,” he said.
