State and local officials are facing pressure to keep bars and indoor dining closed as the U.S. reckons with another upswing in COVID-19 …
State and local officials are facing pressure to keep bars and indoor dining closed as the U. S. reckons with another upswing in COVID-19 infections weeks after lockdown measures were lifted.
Indoor venues where people eat, drink and socialize have become sources of COVID-19 spread in several states where cases are rising, forcing leaders to reevaluate their decisions to allow bars and indoor restaurants to reopen during a pandemic. Meanwhile, governors who have not yet allowed those facilities to reopen said they will reconsider their plans to do so.
“I think across all these states, we just can’t have bars — I’m not sure that we can even run restaurants where people are sitting indoors, nightclubs. Anything that gathers people indoors I think at this moment is way too risky and has to be dialed back,” said Ashish Jha, professor of global health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, on NBC’s “Today” on Monday.
The U. S. is facing an upswing of COVID-19 cases, especially among young adults in the South and West, that threatens to overwhelm hospitals in some states.
Experts have pinned the rise in cases to states that reopened too early without having adequate testing or contact tracing to quickly spot new outbreaks and people not following social distancing measures, such as staying six feet away from others and wearing masks in public.
Governors in Texas, Florida and California, where new cases are increasing rapidly, have mandated bar closures in recent days, and other governors are likely weighing whether they will do the same.
Bars and indoor restaurants still remain open in much of the country, including in other states seeing rises in cases, including Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Nevada and most counties in Pennsylvania.
