Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday that eating indoors during a pandemic can be done, but only if it is “done with care”.
“If you dine in a closed environment, you do it in a spaced-out manner, where there are no people sitting side by side,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told CNN’s Don Lemon. “Good airflow” is the key, he said. What you want to avoid is breathing in other people’s exhaled air, which may be loaded with viruses.
“You know, people sometimes think that public health officials are oblivious to economic considerations. Not at all – I mean, we have a lot of empathy for that, ”said Fauci. “But we still have to maintain public health measures if we want to put our arms around this outbreak.”
“It was 30 degrees, but we were dressed properly. You can do it,” Marr said.
“I don’t know why restaurants are reopening,” said Marr. “I don’t think anything has changed since the restaurants closed. In fact, it’s more risky because of the new variants that are more transferable.”
Marr said the reduced capacity, improving ventilation and adding filtration will help to lower the risk, but none of that eliminates it.
Marr said that if someone just can’t help himself and really wants to eat outside, choose to eat outdoors if he is in a region where his lobster tail will not hurt the cold.
And the outdoors really has to mean outside.
“It is not a structure set up outdoors, because it becomes like an interior,” said Marr.
If you have to eat indoors, she said that maybe if the restaurant was empty, fine.
If there are crowds in the restaurant, find a table that is about 3 meters away from the others. Masks are essential. The waiters, the host and the customers when they are not eating, everyone needs to use them.
“We need better masks, especially for those who will be around people who don’t wear a mask,” said Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health who studies how viruses are transmitted.
Diners can not only pass the virus on to each other while eating or talking to each other, but these small droplets can rise in the air and float for a while and, depending on the restaurant’s ventilation, these droplets can spread beyond 2 meters .
Improved ventilation can help. Ultraviolet-C lamps that kill germs hanging from the ceiling level, like those installed in some hospitals, can break viruses if air circulates in their direction.
“I think there are ways to make restaurants and dining much more secure,” said Milton. “We need to learn what they are and do these things, but it will require some investment.”
In the meantime, behavioral changes can help. Make sure that only people from the same family sit at the same table.
“Not sitting near another table can help, or sitting on an outdoor patio, maybe, but it all depends on how the air is moving,” said Milton. “It’s a lot about the plume. If you’re in that cloud and it’s the coronavirus, that’s bad news.”
For now, Milton said, for Valentine’s Day dinner, he will deliver.
“It’s clear,” said Milton. “Any place where people take off their masks and get together is dangerous for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. That hasn’t changed.”