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After a nearly two-month suspension, alfresco dining will be permitted in Los Angeles County starting Friday.
Officials have agreed to allow restaurants to resume foreign service in light of promising news on the COVID-19 front: the number of cases has dropped significantly in recent weeks, as have hospitalizations.
Recent progress prompted the state of California to reverse its regional coronavirus home stay orders earlier this week, including one that covered southern California, paving the way for the largest reopenings than the county hard-hit LA has seen for weeks.
What does it mean?
Restaurants, wineries and breweries that serve meals are allowed to offer outdoor dining again under a new health ordinance released on Friday. In addition, non-essential businesses that were ordered to close every night from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. will be able to reopen during those hours.
It’s a godsend for struggling restaurants, which still aren’t allowed to offer indoor service. During the suspension, they could only offer delivery and take out, while the special outboard seats that many had built were empty. Restaurants have been hit hard by the COVID-19 closures and many have closed.
How do you stay safe?
Authorities continue to urge diners to wear masks when not eating or drinking and to practice social distancing. Guests and employees must maintain good personal hand hygiene.
“The gradual reopening of the economy is very important. But we have to rely on everyone making community-driven decisions about how we conduct ourselves outside of our homes, ”LA County Health Services Director Dr Christina Ghaly said earlier. this week. “Please wear a mask. Please limit and be careful when interacting with people outside your household. “
Under new county rules, outdoor dining and wine serving seating must be limited to 50 percent of capacity, with tables spaced at least eight feet apart.
Outdoor seating will also be limited to a maximum of six people per table – and everyone seated together must be from the same household, depending on the order of health.
In a nod to concerns surrounding the Super Bowl and other sporting events that could keep audiences out for long periods of time, the ordinance also states that “televisions or other screens showing programs are to remain turned off until further notice. “.
The California Department of Public Health has also offered these recommendations to restaurateurs:
- Provide adequate ventilation in all spaces.
- Physical distance where possible.
- Require the use of face covers by workers (when respiratory protection is not required) and clients / clients.
- Requires frequent hand washing and regular cleaning and disinfection.
- Train workers on these and other elements of the COVID-19 prevention plan, on the appropriate processes to identify new cases of illness in the workplace and, when they are identified, to intervene quickly and work with them. public health authorities to stop the spread of the virus.
- Limit the number of customers to a single table at a home unit or to customers who have requested to be seated together. Members of the same group seated at the same table do not need to be six feet apart. All group members should be present before sitting down and hosts should bring the whole group to the table at the same time.
- Install physical barriers or partitions in cash registers, bars, hospitality kiosks, and other areas where it is difficult to maintain a physical distance of six feet.
- Any area where guests or workers are queuing should also be clearly marked for an appropriate physical distance. This includes checkout counters and terminals, deli counters and lines, washrooms, elevator lobbies, reception stands and waiting areas, valet drop-off and pick-up and all another area where customers congregate.
What about small private gatherings?
For the first time in two monthsThe County of LA officially allows private gatherings to resume, as long as they are held outdoors, in which members of no more than three households and no more than 15 people participate.
But the relaxation of the ban on meetings, said county public health director Barbara Ferrer, “is only intended to allow a household to form a small, stable social group with one or two other households, so that you can get together occasionally. – always outside, always six feet away and always with no more than 15 people.
“It just doesn’t work if every night people get together with a different group of people to have little parties,” she said.
The next Super Bowl is a concern.
Officials fear the big watch nights for the Feb.7 game will trigger another wave of COVID-19 at a time the county is only now emerging from holiday season.
Ferrer urged restaurants to reopen outdoor dining areas to avoid mistakes made in the run-up to the World Series and NBA Finals, when crowds of fans crowded the outdoor patios.
“It will be tragic if the Super Bowl becomes a super-spreader of coronavirus,” she said this week.
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