A few things. First, correlation doesn’t equal causation. People diagnosed with COVID-19 in this study also dined out. There’s not clear evidence that any of them actually contracted coronavirus when they dined out, as opposed to at any other community location.
The study was also very small, with only 154 COVID cases. Results from any study with such a low number of participants should be taken with a grain of salt.
Plus, far more folks in this study contracted the coronavirus from close contact with friends and family (42%), versus only 14% who contracted it from an unknown source in their community. When looking at these 22 people, they were more likely to have gone to a restaurant than others in the study. But they may also have been more likely to spend more time doing lots of other things out and about in their communities.
Although we aren’t attorneys, we believe the answer is yes, you can. Angelo Amador, Executive Director of the Restaurant Law Center, answered some questions in a recent webinar about this issue. Despite a false narrative that’s going around about choosing to wear a mask as a constitutional right, he said, those don’t actually apply to private businesses.
And while there may be guests with a legitimate disability that prevents them from wearing a mask, that doesn’t mean that you have to allow them to enter your business, especially indoors, if it would impede your ability to safely provide goods and services to others.
Instead, offer a reasonable alternative - like ordering online or by phone and bringing their order outside to place it in their car.
Run your policy by your counsel before finalizing.
If your child doesn’t have any symptoms (and hasn’t tested positive), you’re cleared to continue coming to work. This falls under what we’re calling “second-hand exposure” and, realistically, most people in the country would have to stay at some point if we kept everyone out for being exposed to someone who was exposed to someone with COVID. If your child develops symptoms or tests positive, then you’d need to stay home due to direct exposure.
See ZHH and Zedic’s Guest Temperature Check SOPs here.
We always recommend having employees and guests take their own temperature with a forehead thermometer you provide, then reporting or showing that temp to the person responsible for managing the temp check station, because it limits the amount of contact that employee has with folks who may be sick. Sanitize the heck out of the thermometer, table, partition, etc. And focus on great signage that makes the process clear before guests arrive.
Invite them to sit in the shade outside of the building or 6ft apart and masked if indoors. If possible, offer them cold water. Wait 10 minutes and conduct another temperature check. If it’s still above the threshold, politely ask them to head home.
10 day exclusions are for when a person has COVID-like symptoms or confirmed COVID. 14+ day exclusions are for when someone has no symptoms themselves, but has been exposed to someone with COVID. A 14 day exclusion must start on the date that someone had their most recent exposure to someone with COVID. So if that exposure re-occurs or is ongoing, the date resets, to a maximum of 24 days from the sick person’s symptom onset.
The Rockefeller Foundation has focused their resources and funding on development of an effective testing strategy and released a major report that says we need to get to 200 million tests per month. Projections are we’ll be to 70 million tests per month by October. Their plan provides a clear and feasible road map.
This week you (and we) were plagued by return to school illness issues. And many of you sent kids back to school for them to quickly revert to remote learning.
