Contact tracing can help prevent restaurant outbreaks, experts say, but only in places without widespread infections. “I would like to think that through contact tracking and quick contacts we have quickly quarantined, yet have not had major outbreaks in restaurants,” said Melissa Lunt, director of nursing at the Graham County Health Department in Arizona. When workers became ill in two restaurants in the area, the health department moved quickly to quarantine them to prevent further spread of the community.
Testing is the own problem for workers. While many cities offer free tests, results can take days or even weeks to return, leaving employees away from a job while they wait.
“Many times the restaurant will have the bill if they want rapid testing through a private company,” said Dr. Alex Jahangir, chairman of a Nashville coronavirus task force that has studied the role of restaurants and bars in its area. “Sometimes the restaurant will tell its employees to come to one of our city sites, which are free, but the results can take three days. If people are symptomatic, the restaurant will sometimes refer the person to a local medical center and will pay their health insurance for the test. “
Of course, low-wage restaurant providers, especially part-time employees, may not have health coverage. Or if they did, layoffs might be at risk of making payments for those plans.
In the meantime, some owners are doing what they can to operate and keep people safe, at great cost and worry. Benjamin Goldberg, a founder of Strategic Hospitality, a group that runs eight locations in Nashville, has opened some locations with indoor dining and kept other places closed. In the meantime, he and his staff have become mini-public health experts. “We did research on what places around the world did and learned from them,” he said. “Direction for city and state were only the basis of our expectations.”
In short, to test anyone who worked or entered his restaurants – an impossibility – they moved to take the temperature of each customer, worker and vendor before joining. Employees are regularly tested for the virus. All silverware comes in a bag covered with stickers, menus are virtually gone and pens used to sign checks are sanitized and placed in a sealing bag.
“We felt that if we could build that confidence in the short term, it would pay off in the long term.”
