Sick workers’ return left to restaurants
Employees are no longer required to test negative
Restaurant workers who test positive for COVID-19 can return to work sooner — and without testing negative — under an executive order signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Before that order, any restaurant employee who tested positive had to furnish employers with two negative COVID-19 tests before coming back to dining rooms.
The relaxed guidelines now put the burden on restaurants to check for symptoms and decide when employees can return.
“Restaurants are going to have to be more transparent than ever to make people feel safe,” says Diego Ng, co-owner of Temple Street Eatery in Fort Lauderdale, which posts its safety guidelines on social media to build trust among diners.
Tim Petrillo isn’t about to stop testing employees at his 11 Fort Lauderdale bars, restaurants and clubs. Some of his properties include YOLO, Java & Jam and Spatch.
“We’re not going to stop just because the state says so,” Petrillo says. “If you don’t require a COVID test to go back to work, and he turns out to be contagious, and he infects the entire staff, I’m not going to risk
my business, my health or my employees’ health.”
DeSantis’ executive order is in lockstep with new federal guidelines released in July by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC officials updated their guidelines – which are recommendations, not rules – to follow a more symptomsbased approach to testing nonfrontline workers.
The latest amendment erases a previous order that required restaurant workers to self-quarantine for 14 days if showing symptoms, or if they traveled on a cruise ship or through an airport in the past two weeks. The CDC’s new screening procedures say restaurateurs should “actively encourage employees who are sick or have recently had a close contact with a person with COVID-19 to stay home.”
Now, patients recovering from the new coronavirus can stop self-isolating 10 days after the first appearance of symptoms – shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, dry cough and fatigue – so long as they don’t show any new symptoms or run a fever.
John Nesbit, a manager at Deerfield Beach waterfront restaurant Two Georges at the Cove, is all for letting restaurant workers who tested positive for COVID-19 return to work faster, especially if they’re sitting home not earning money.
“These guidelines are a good thing because some people test positive but show no symptoms,” Nesbit says. “A lot of people are struggling right now and need to be paid. Still, you don’t want people coming back who are sick.”
For Jason Lakow, co-owner of Mazie’s in West Palm Beach, letting restaurant employees go back to work without at least one negative COVID-19 test is “nonsensical.”
The problem, he says, is that asymptomatic workers who test positive can still be highly contagious to others even after selfisolating for two weeks or longer.
“Fourteen days is not a onesize-fits-all quarantine period. To relax the rules now creates a big threat,” Lakow says. “This is very nearsighted if the goal was to produce results more quickly, because you’re sacrificing safety.”
Anxious about exposing himself or coworkers, Lakow has barely opened his dining room since March. In July he opened the eatery to omakase-style popup dinners, called “Sushially Distanced,” on Fridays and Saturdays. Lakow limits seating to five customers per dinner service and does contract-tracing with his two employees, a chef and a manager.
“If someone tested positive and walked into Mazie’s tomorrow, Mazie’s would automatically be shut down for two weeks, no question,” Lakow says. “We’re taking no chances.”
Ng says he doesn’t buy the governor’s move to relax testing requirements. And he’s not about to lower his restaurant’s strict testing standards, either: He and his business partner, Alex Kuk, pay for all employees’ COVID-19 tests and face masks.
“We’re in this situation because we didn’t listen at the outset and socially distance,” he says. “We’re going to stick to our own standards for safety.”
Ng says one Temple Street employee who tested positive for COVID-19 in early July has been in self-quarantine ever since, mainly because the virus “was so hard on him he needed a mental break,” he says. Out of precaution, he sent every worker to get tested – all came back negative – and hired a sanitation crew to scrub down the dining room.
“We created our own rules for safety,” Ng says. “We have customers who are older, or are new parents, or are pregnant. It’s not about you. It’s about every single guest who comes here.”