In a virtual discussion Thursday with celebrity chef and restaurateur José Andrés, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key figure in the government’s COVID-19 response and the country’s top infectious disease expert, addressed the restaurant industry and gave his thoughts on the reopening of dining rooms around the country.
Andrés, who is known for his award-winning restaurants and mobilizing food relief programs through his nonprofit World Central Kitchen, chatted with the White House adviser over Instagram Live to discuss restaurants in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic and the precautions chefs and owners should take as their businesses start to welcome back diners.
Here are some of the recommendations Fauci had for the restaurant industry.
Reopening dining rooms
Many restaurant owners feel as though determining when it is safe to reopen their dining rooms is a moving target as states roll out their own reopening timelines, and there seems to be differing methodologies at play, Andrés told Fauci.
Because the intensity of the virus varies greatly city to city, Fauci said restaurants should consult their local health officials who are tracking local case numbers and monitoring the spread to determine when to reopen.
“Generally, your health officials can give you that degree of preciseness about where you are. For example, if you’re in a very low area of infection, you may be able to have tables that are just modestly separated from each other,” he said. “It’s really a matter of judgment. It would not be a good idea for either of us to say, ‘This is the rule for restaurants now,’ because it depends on where the restaurant is.”
In Texas, Phase III of Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening plan allows restaurants to open their dining rooms at 75% capacity and increase maximum table sizes from six to 10 people starting June 12. With daily case numbers still trending upward in Dallas County, many restaurants are not reopening their dining rooms yet, but others have welcomed back customers and are navigating the new dining scene.
Sick employees
The correct response for restaurants that have infected employees depends on scale, Fauci said. If multiple employees are sick, a restaurant needs to shut down until employees are cleared to come back. If a restaurant has one sick employee, restaurants should contact their local health officials who will assess the connectivity between that employee and other staff and customers, and will advise on how to proceed, he said.
Local health officials will determine if there are other employees or customers who are “high-risk contacts” based on their proximity to the infected person and the duration of time they interacted with them. If other employees are determined to be high-risk contacts, there are additional steps that need to be taken.
“What you need to do then is quarantine that person,” Fauci said. “If they’re not a high-risk person, you just make sure that if they have symptoms, they don’t come to work. You have a responsibility of not only protecting yourself and your employees, but also your clients and customers. So I would make sure that you ask for the particular circumstances from the health authority in your district.”
New sanitation standards
When it comes to effectively sanitizing restaurants, Andrés asked Fauci if owners should explore new technologies like UV lights that could add additional layers of sanitation.
While some studies have shown that UV lights are effective in killing the virus, Fauci said he doesn’t think every restaurant needs to install them. The most effective way to kill the virus is much simpler and cheaper than that.
“This virus is very sensitive particularly to alcohol-based cleansers,” he said. “A good wipe-down is important because we do know that the virus can live for differential periods of time on chrome, steel, cloth and wood. And it really varies. It does better on very hard surfaces and much less well on porous surfaces. So the idea about intermittently, often enough to be effective, wiping down things that people touch ― around the chairs, doorknobs, going into the ladies’ and the men’s rooms ― I strongly recommend that you do that. … Doing that kind of good cleansing will work.”
In addition to continuously sanitizing surfaces in restaurants, Fauci said employees should also constantly wash their hands and use hand sanitizer themselves.
“Your staff should do it until they’re tired of it,” he told Andrés.
Providing sanitizer for customers is just as important. It’s best to do as soon as customers walk in the door, but it wouldn’t hurt to also have hand sanitizer on the tables for customers. If anything, Fauci said, providing that extra sanitizing option would bring comfort to customers.
Guidelines laid out by the Texas Restaurant Association and Abbott’s reopening plan also encourage restaurants not to leave utensils, cups or condiments on tables and to use disposable menus only as an added layer of precaution.
Indoor air circulation
Hearing that the virus can spread easily through particles in the air, restaurant owners, Andrés included, have wondered if they need to consider installing air purification systems to reduce the risk of spread inside their establishments.
It’s true that the virus can spread in the air, Fauci said. And in a perfect world, restaurants would have conditioning systems to filter the air, but installing expensive ventilation systems is less than realistic.
“I don’t think it would be practical for restaurants to put in the kinds of filters that we have when we study the virus in the lab,” he said. “We have a system of air flow and a filter so that the virus, if it’s in the air, will not get to you. I think that from a standpoint of older restaurants in the United States, and the importance of the restaurant industry, so many of these things would be impractical. So the best thing is to try and prevent it.”
Wearing facial coverings and practicing stringent sanitation is the best line of defense in preventing the spread, he said.
Getting back to normal
“Any words of wisdom to the business owners that are obviously suffering? When will we go back to normal? … What can you tell us so we don’t have this kind of sense that we are in the dark sometimes?” Andrés asked.
Fauci said he can’t give any guarantees on when the threat of the virus might be eliminated, but the slowly declining numbers of deaths, hospital admissions and new infections nationwide are encouraging to him.
It is likely that more cases will arise in the fall, but he said he hopes the country is able to do what it needs to do to prevent a second wave from happening. He added that he is cautiously optimistic a vaccine could be available by the end of winter.
“I would hope that as we get further into late spring and early summer, we’ll start to see a diminution. You may not get back to absolutely normal, but you’ll get back to something that resembles normality where you can start gradually opening up,” he said. “My advice to the people in the restaurant industry is that, please try and hang in there because this will end. It is not going to be forever. Part of our culture that makes us happy is going out to restaurants. … It’s a very important part of our culture. Don’t give up. We will come to an end to this, really.”
