New York City on Wednesday announced a list of guidelines for how customers who choose to eat indoors can now work to keep themselves and restaurant workers safer. “With indoor meals at 25 percent, we want to focus on the right way to do this,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said during his news conference on Wednesday, where the guidelines were released. “We also want to focus on the right way to protect the people who work there, we owe it to them to protect their safety.”
Among the recommended guidelines shared by the city’s public health consultant, Dr. Jay Varma, customers are now being told that they should limit the size of the parties to four or fewer people, with the added caveat that the party is limited to members family or a social bubble; wearing masks at all times, except for eating and drinking (which goes a step beyond state guidelines, which allows customers to remove their masks when they are seated); and scheduling tests for COVID-19 at least once a month.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22309780/Screen_Shot_2021_02_17_at_10.16.34_AM.png)
New York City resumed indoor dining at 25 percent on February 12, although cases of COVID-19 and the city’s positivity rate still remain high. In addition, the presence of new variants of the virus has prompted health experts to warn of a potential “fourth wave”, especially if vaccination efforts do not accelerate soon.
Although COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are in general decline, New York still registered 3,321 new cases on February 15 based on an average of seven days, and the city’s positivity rate was 7.04 percent . Even with data falling, the numbers still remain high compared to when the state announced a ban on indoor meals in December last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to list indoor meals among the activities most at risk for the spread of the virus.
Still, the restaurant industry remains divided over the return of meals indoors. Many in the industry feel they have no choice but to reopen to stay afloat, mainly due to the cold outdoor climate and limited financial support from the non-existent government. The owners also cite the care they took, including installing new air filters, barriers between tables, temperature checks and collecting information for contact tracking. Others, however, want to wait longer and say more New Yorkers need to be vaccinated before it is safe to resume meals indoors.
Although restaurant workers are now eligible to receive the vaccine – and many have already done so – it will be a while before they receive the second dose, and the city has continually asked the federal government and vaccine manufacturers to step up efforts to production and distribution meet high demand. “This is the last big fight and we need a constant and larger supply of vaccines,” said de Blasio during the press conference.
The new city guidelines announced on Wednesday go one step further than those announced by the state, which has a looser policy on wearing masks for dining indoors and allows up to 10 people in the same group to sit together. A city spokesman clarified, however, that city guidelines are suggestions that they expect New Yorkers to follow, but the state sets the rules for indoor dining.