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New Jersey bars and restaurants will soon have to close all indoor services before 10 p.m. and all indoor interstate organized sports up to high school level will soon be banned under new restrictions. Governor Phil Murphy will announce Monday in response to the big spike in new coronavirus cases, NJ Advance Media has learned.
Murphy will announce the new restrictions on Monday during his 1 p.m. COVID-19 briefing in Trenton, an official with knowledge of the announcement told NJ Advance Media.
The latest round of restrictions were first reported on NJ.com’s exclusive text messaging service included with a subscription. Restaurant and bar changes do not affect outdoor service areas which remain open in colder weather.
“We will be changing some rules of the road,” Murphy said in a morning interview. “This is not where we were in the spring when we closed the whole place.”
Restaurants, bars, clubs and lounges will be prohibited from serving food and alcohol between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. New Jersey casinos will also be prohibited from serving food and alcohol during this time.
The new rules will take effect Thursday morning, just two weeks before Thanksgiving. The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is considered one of the biggest bar nights of the year.
Murphy will also announce that seating in indoor bars will be banned. Bars and restaurants, however, will be able to accommodate groups of people at tables within six feet of each other as long as they are separated by plexiglass barriers and can set up outdoor igloos for individual groups. as the colder weather approaches.
Inland interstate sports will end for elementary, middle and high school students. The new restrictions will not affect college or professional sports.
This means that any New Jersey team can play as long as it is another New Jersey team, although teams from clubs and schools that travel out of state for matches in hall, fixtures and tournaments during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holidays will be prohibited from doing so. .
“We’ll take some action later today,” Murphy said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. He alluded to the restrictions on bars and interstate sports for young people, but did not provide details.
The latest regulations will be announced as new cases of COVID-19 hit their highest level in the Garden State since late April and early May, as the state is hit by a second wave of the pandemic. The governor recently almost assured that new restrictions would be announced soon.
CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracking | Bulletin | Home page
“We are still in the midst of a pandemic and we need everyone to take this seriously,” Murphy tweeted on Sunday, announcing 2,043 more cases and four more deaths attributed to the virus.
Sunday marked the fifth day in a row over 2,000 new cases daily. Authorities reported an additional 3,207 cases on Saturday, the highest number since April 27, when the state was still in the midst of the initial outbreak.
New Jersey’s seven-day average for new cases is 2,177, more than 35% more than just a week ago and a peak of almost 300% from a month ago.
The last time New Jersey recorded more than 3,000 cases, the state was in the midst of an unprecedented lockdown with schools and non-essential businesses closed to slow the outbreak.
Murphy had resisted the order of sweeping new statewide restrictions until recently as new cases and hospitalizations continued to rise.
“We are working to ensure that we have a good balance between strategic scalpel type actions and some broader actions that we will almost certainly take sooner rather than later,” Murphy said in a public appearance Friday.
Murphy issued unprecedented lockdown orders in March when the pandemic raged through the state. The state remains in stage 2 of its recovery and reopening plan, although some elements of stage three have also been implemented.
Restaurants and bars are already limited to 25% indoor capacity.
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Matt Arco can be reached at [email protected].
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