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Businesses large and small – from McDonald’s and Home Depot to local yoga studios – are re-imposing mask mandates on workers and customers as the United States Covid-19 case fly away again. Bars, gyms and restaurants across the country even require vaccines to even get inside establishments.
After a largely maskless summer, this is a reversal no one wanted to see, brought on by the rapid spread Delta variant and new guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But business owners and workers say they will do all they can to keep their doors open and not slow down the economic gains of recent months.
The Delta variant is potentially fatal blow to restaurants already facing higher food costs, labor shortages and “17 months of debt due to closures,” said Erika Polmar, executive director of the Independent Restaurant Coalition. “We are in a world of suffering.”
About 90,000 restaurants and bars closed during the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association, which, along with the IRC, is pushing for a renewal of government assistance. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund distributed $ 28.6 billion to more than 100,000 restaurant establishments across the country before running out of funds at the end of June.
“Ahead of the curve”
“We already went through the worst of challenges when we closed the interior [operations] last year, “said Brack May, chef and owner of Cowbell, a New Orleans burger restaurant.” Let’s get a head start here.
May recently started asking customers to show their vaccination cards for indoor meals. He said he wanted to protect his workers, who must be vaccinated but often have young children at home, as well as his neighborhood, where some musicians have recently contracted the coronavirus.
May expects vaccine rules like hers to become commonplace eventually. Next month, New York City will begin requiring vaccinations to enter restaurants, gyms and theaters.
But for now, clients are much more likely to encounter mask mandates. After lifting mask recommendations for fully vaccinated people in May, the CDC turned the tide in late July, recommending masks for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people in areas of higher transmission.
The changing focus has caused confusion over what rules to apply and how. Walmart and Target, for example, recently started requiring masks for employees – but not customers – in areas with high rates of virus transmission. McDonald’s requires masks for employees and customers. Home Depot’s mask mandate is national.
Amazon said on August 6 that all workers in its warehouses should go into disguise from August 9. Previously, employees were only required to wear masks if they had not been vaccinated against the virus.
“The facts are changing”
A handful of places, like Louisiana, the San Francisco Bay Area and Las Vegas, impose masks indoors.
In Arkansa, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on Sunday he had changed his mind on a bill he signed in April to ban mask warrants across the state because “the facts are changing,” and admitted signing him at a time when COVID-19 cases were low in his state was “a mistake.”
“Facts change and leaders must adapt to the new facts that you have and the reality of what you are facing,” the Republican governor said on “Facing the Nation.”
Many business owners did not wait for the CDC or their local governments to act. In mid-July, Tamra Patterson reinstated a mask tenure and reduced seating to 65 from 200 at Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe, the restaurant she owns in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I need every dollar and penny I can get, but if I don’t have healthy employees, I don’t have a business. If the customers are sick, I have nothing.” , Patterson said.
Customers are generally receptive to the mask’s mandate, Patterson said. Only one came out.
PanTerra Gallery, a women’s clothing store in Bisbee, Ariz., Reinstated a mask mandate for customers a few weeks ago after seeing cases climb nationwide.
Not all companies support mandates
“We are a tourist town, so it was only a matter of time before it reached us again,” said Lisa Wines, a PanTerra employee. Most people are okay with the new tenure, she said, but some turn and walk out of the store.
Not all companies support mandates. Basilico’s Pasta e Vino, a restaurant in Huntington Beach, Calif., Has spoken out against masks on social media. A sign on his door demands that customers prove they are not vaccinated.
Some workers do not want to see the return of the masks either. Dru W., a grocery store worker in Houston who asked The Associated Press not to use his full name for fear of reprisal at work, said he was fully immunized months ago and that he appreciated the freedom it gives him to go out without a mask. Few stores around him apply the new CDC guidelines, he said, and neither will he.
“I did not receive my two doses and I did not deal with the rather nasty side effects to be told to return to the current situation during the pandemic,” he said.
But other traders see masks as an important way to end the pandemic. Austin Ray Shanks, who works at a Walmart in Monroe, Wash., Said he found the masks uncomfortable but necessary. He is disappointed that many customers in his store refuse to wear them.
Marshall Crawley said his gymnasium in Morrisville, North Carolina recently announced that it would require masks for both vaccinated and unvaccinated clients. But the rule is not enforced, he said.
The CDC has gone too far
“I don’t really feel like it feels a lot of good to wear a mask when everyone else around me isn’t,” said Crawley, client manager for J&J Editorial, a healthcare service company. scholarly edition.
Crawley believes the CDC went too far when it told people vaccinated they could take off their masks this spring. Now, he said, it will be too difficult to convince people to hand them over.
Jose Backer, who works in customer service for a Los Angeles County food packaging manufacturer, said his company started letting vaccinated workers remove their masks earlier this year. But soon everyone stopped wearing them. This angered Backer, who does not want a repeat of a COVID-19 outbreak that made him and others sick at his workplace last year. He is relieved that his county is once again demanding indoor masks for everyone.
The new wave of warrants reassures companies that have never given up on masks, even as U.S. cases declined earlier this summer.
Liz Manasek, part owner of Warner Bodies, a manufacturer of custom trucks in Elwood, Indiana, has kept a mask policy in place after seeing other companies grapple with different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated workers.
About 60% of the company’s 105 employees are now vaccinated, she said. She told employees she would not consider withdrawing the mandate until that level reached 80%.
Manasek has received reluctance from the workers, but reminds them that the policy has been effective. Only one or two employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, she said.
“We just have to hold on and stay on the basics,” she said.
Kate Gibson, Kristopher Brooks, and Megan Cerullo contributed to this report.
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