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Businesses large and small, from McDonald’s and Home Depot to local yoga studios, are reinstating mask warrants as coronavirus cases in the United States increase. Bars, gyms and restaurants across the country require vaccines to enter.
After a largely maskless summer, this is a reversal no one wanted to see, brought on by the fast-spreading delta variant and new directions from the United States Centers for Disease Control. But business owners and workers say they will do whatever they can to keep their doors open and not slow down economic gains. the last few months.
“We already went through the worst of challenges when we closed the interior 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 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 virus transmission rates. McDonald’s requires masks for employees and customers. Home Depot’s mask mandate is nationwide.
A handful of places, like Louisiana, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Las Vegas, impose masks indoors.
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 from 200 to 65 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.
“We’re 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 around and walk out of the store.
Not all companies support mandates. Pasta e Vino by Basilico, a restaurant in Huntington Beach, Calif., Has spoken out against masks on social media. A sign on his door requires customers to 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 not to use his full name for fear of reprisal at work, said he was fully immunized months ago and enjoyed the freedom that that gives him to go out without a mask. Few of the 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.
“I don’t really feel like it feels very good to wear a mask when everyone else around me isn’t,” said Crawley, client manager for J&J Editorial, a managed services company for scholarly editing.
Crawley believes the CDC went too far when it told those 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 again demanding 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 keep the basics,” she said.
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