(Kaiser Health News) — As states ease their blockades, bar bars emerge as fertile areas for the coronavirus.
They create a dangerous cocktail of tight spaces, young adults unafraid of getting sick and, in some cases, owners who do not impose limits on the number of customers and rules of social distancing.
Public health authorities have identified the bars as the site of the outbreaks in Louisiana, Florida, Idaho and Wyoming.
The weekend of June 20, Texas suspended alcohol sales licenses in 17 bars after undercover agents observed crowds taunting the public health rules that required customers to keep a safe distance from each other and limit the occupation of taverns.
Adriana Megas saw that HandleBar Houston was so crowded when it was two weeks ago that she decided to leave. “They didn’t count who came and went,” said Megas, 38, a nursing student. “No one wore masks. As if the covid did not exist ”.
The owners of HandleBar Houston, one of the suspended license bars, did not respond to a request for comment. Megas said she and her friends passed five other crowded bars on the way home. “The street was crazy crowded,” he said. “Each bar was full.”
In Boise, Idaho, at least 152 people they have been diagnosed with covid-19 in cases that health authorities link to people who visited bars and clubs without knowing that they were infected.
On Monday, June 22, the Central Health District that oversees four counties, bars and nightclubs closed again in Boise Ada County.
The bars are custom-made for the spread of the virus, with loud music and loud chats. Alcohol can also prevent rules from being followed to prevent infection.
“People hardly want social distance,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Health Safety Center in Baltimore. “They are going to drink alcohol, which is a social lubricant. They will speak out loud, and if they have an energetic speech, that will generate more drops. ”
Also, the very act of drinking is incompatible with wearing a mask, a basic way to limit the spread of infection. And public health experts say many clients are young adults who may think they are immune to the coronavirus.
It is certainly less deadly to them: less than 4% of adults in their 20s with covid-19 they were hospitalized, compared to 22% of those in their 60s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Only 1 in 1,000 patients with covid-19 in their twenties dies from the virus.
However, as bars and other public places open, infection rates increase in younger adults and bars they are a particularly dangerous vector. Several outbreaks have been traced in bars they go to college.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, health authorities have received reports of more than 100 cases of positive covid-19 tests related to visits to bars and bar employees in Tigerland, a neighborhood frequented by Louisiana State University students.
Reggie Chatman, a 23-year-old LSU graduate and sports journalist at a Baton Rouge television station, said he was surprised at how crowded Tigerland bars were when the weekend of 20 passed.
“It seemed like a football weekend. It was amazing just seeing so many people walking, “he said. “Each bar was full. It didn’t seem like they were really limiting the entrance. I didn’t see any mask. “
Jason Nay, general manager of Fred, one of those bars, said the place closed two days last week to test all employees after three tested positive for covid-19. The business reopened Friday night, but it only had five clients.
“This shows you how many people know what is going on,” he said. “Even the students who thought they were invincible weren’t comfortable hanging out.” He added that Fred will begin taking the clients’ temperatures and deliver disposable masks.
Nay, 37, said she believed most of the students had been actively socializing for months with friends at home. “I don’t think they changed anything until recently, and I think the main reason they changed is because their parents complained to them,” she said.
Credit: PETER PARKS / AFP via Getty Images
–
There are around of 43,000 bars in the country. As many states have allowed them to reopen, the authorities have enacted various measures to mitigate the chances of infection.
Earlier this month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis allowed the bars to open at half capacity with social distancing. The week of 22 warned that violators risk losing their alcoholic beverage licenses.
In Texas, the governor Greg Abbott decreed that bars should limit indoor service to half their legal occupation, have tables for 10 people or less and require a 6-foot spacing between groups.
“There are certain counties where most of the people who tested positive are under the age of 30, and this is generally a product of being in bars,” Abbott said. at a press conference.
On the weekend of June 20, undercover inspectors from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission visited nearly 600 bars and restaurants in major urban areas. The commission posted on Twitter videos of two bars and a photograph of a third, all showing customers standing shoulder to shoulder and chatting face to face.
Those bars and 14 others had their liquor sales permits suspended for 30 days, with the threat of a 60-day suspension if there was a new violation.
On his Facebook page, one of the bars sanctioned by the commission, BARge 295 in Seabrook, near Houston, which has been promoting its music Live, pork roasts and a bikini contest, indicated he would appeal the action.
“Everyone in the country is aware of the situation and has the ability to think for themselves and decide when and where they want to interact socially,” the bar reported in a series of publications.
Other bar owners have found the mandates manageable. Greg Barrineau, owner of several bars in the San Antonio area, said he rearranged tables and stools to meet state requirements.
“The guidelines are not that difficult to follow,” he said. Although the state does not require masks, she assured that the county administrative officer and the mayor decided to fine the companies if the clients did not use them, and most of the clients use them.
“You come in, sit down and take off your mask,” Barrineau said, adding that he was not sure how big the difference is. “If they were waiting in line outside and in the bathroom, they would have them on.”
JC Díaz, president of the American Nightlife Association, which represents bars and clubs, considers that it has been more difficult for bars to impose the use of masks because it has been a highly politicized issue.
“The problem now is that people don’t adhere to mitigation measures,” he said. “We are doing what we can to prevent the spread of covid-19, but if you’re someone reckless, who doesn’t care about the health of others, you shouldn’t be out.”
Masks alone cannot solve the problem, said Dr. Ray Niaura, acting chairman of the department of epidemiology at the School of Global Public Health at New York University.
The risk of contagion is impossible to eliminate in bars, especially since many infected people are asymptomatic. “Even if you separate the tables, you will still have groups of people together,” he said.
The nursing student Megas said crowds have not deterred her from returning to Houston bars despite the continued spread of the coronavirus. “There’s a little part of me that says, ‘well, I’d better get it now, while I’m not in school.'”
– .
