[ad_1]
Restaurants in Multnomah County, Clackamas and Washington will be able to reopen their dining rooms on Friday. Governor Kate Brown released a statement saying that Portland’s metro counties have left the ‘extreme risk’ designation today, which means that as of February 12, Portland restaurants can serve certain customers at the interior.
“High risk” counties – the level below “extreme risk” – may allow restaurants to serve indoors up to 25 percent capacity or 50 people, whichever is smaller. Restaurants must close at 11 p.m.
Yesterday, the state released preliminary data that showed counties in the Portland area had fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents for two weeks, which would make them eligible to move to ‘high risk. “. However, the governor had not yet certified this data; this morning, Brown’s office released updated county risk levels, showing that all three counties in the Portland area – along with six other counties, including Hood River and Deschutes – had dropped to that “to high risk ”.
This will be the first time that Portland-area restaurants have been able to serve customers indoors since November. Currently, restaurants in the Portland area can only serve customers on-site if they are doing so outside; some restaurants, with no obvious outdoor space for a makeshift patio, have instead chosen to take a “winter break”, reopening in the spring.
Many greats across the country have reopened their doors for dining, including New York, Chicago, and Seattle; however, many diners and restaurant workers said the choice to do so could be disastrous across the board. In Portland, restaurant workers are not yet eligible for the vaccine, and some of the highly contagious variants of COVID-19 have been discovered in some counties in Oregon.
This story will be updated with more information.
• Oregon COVID-19 information page [Official]
• The impact of the coronavirus on the Portland restaurant world [EPDX]
[ad_2]
Source link