Wolf orders restrictions through Jan. 4. Some business owners say they’ll stay open.
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, seeking to slow out-of-control spread of the coronavirus, on Thursday announced sweeping new orders that will again shut down large swaths of society — including indoor dining at restaurants — for a three-week stretch, including the holidays.
Wolf said he knows the measures are painful, but that they have to be taken.
“We need to slow the spread right now to save lives,” Wolf told reporters during a virtual news conference. The situation with COVID-19 now, Wolf said, is “worse than it was in the spring whenwefirst took action to flatten the curve.”
The orders the most drastic since Wolf’s shutdown of all nonessential businesses in March take effect Saturday at 12:01 a.m. and expire on Jan. 4 at 8 a.m.
Among other things, the orders temporarily shut down indoor restaurant dining, limit indoor gatherings to no more than 10 people, stop all high school sports and in-person extracurricular activities, close casinos, gyms, museums, bowling alleys, theaters and other entertainment venues, and ban spectators from pro and college sports.
And all businesses serving the public may only operate at 50% of maximum capacity.
“We know that COVID-19 thrives in places where people gather together,” Wolf said. Hence, the new orders are meant to target “high-risk” activities and environments.
While lawmakers called the moves horrible but necessary some Lehigh Valley businesses pledged to defy the orders and remain open.
“People are angry, scared and desperate,” said Steve DiDonato of Bethlehem, a wine importer and spokesman for an informal group of Lehigh Valley restaurants. “There are lots of people that want to defy the orders because if they don’t, they will not survive.”
Ed Frack, owner of SuperSets in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, said he planned to keep his gym open unless there is a plan in place to provide immediate financial relief to businesses ordered to close.
Asked what will happen to
restaurants if they defy the threeweek shutdown order, Wolf said, “We have the enforcement in place. There will be the usual citations and fines.”
Tony Iannelli, president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, called the announcement “devastating news at the worst possible time.”
John Longstreet, president of the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association, said Wolf’s statements Thursday did nothing but offer lip service to the precarious financial condition of restaurants.
“Our expertise is repeatedly ignored when drafting mitigation orders,” Longstreet said.
However, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine and Dr. Meda Higa, an assistant professor of biology at York College, said data and studies support the restaurant action.
Levine said contact tracing and case investigations done in Pennsylvania earlier in the year showed restaurants, bars and nightclubs “were contributing significantly to the spread.”
Hospitals on the brink
Wolf said he hopes the new, temporary restrictions would achieve three goals:
▪ Stop the spread of the virus.
▪ Prevent hospitals and health care workers from becoming overwhelmed. Wolf noted the virus has been in the state for nine months and “our health care workers, above all, are really, really tired.”
▪ Create a “bridge” to a better future by getting Pennsylvanians through the holidays and closer to time when vaccines are widely available.
During the online news conference, Geisinger Health System CEO Dr. Jaewon Ryu supported Wolf’s latest moves.
Ryu said the system has seen a tripling of COVID-positive patients since mid-October and, beyond that, people are still suffering non-COVID emergencies, including heart attacks, strokes and gastrointestinal bleeds.
Geisinger campuses are operating at close to 100% of capacity. Ryu spoke in terms of virus flow around the state and said it must “turn down the spigot.”
“Upstream mitigation efforts are going to be needed,” he said.
The Wolf announcement came on a day when the state reported more than 11,972 more cases of the virus and 248 more deaths.
At noon on Thursday, there were 5,877 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state — the highest number of the pandemic — with 1,218 in intensive care and 675 on ventilators.
The 5,877 hospitalized figure represented a slight increase from the 5,852 hospitalized a day earlier.
Lawmakers react
“This is tragic. It is also necessary,” said state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, a Lehigh County Democrat.
“We all need to be as clear as possible about the decisions we all make right now: There are no good decisions during a pandemic. There are just slightly less bad ones,” Schlossberg said.
He said that only six intensive care beds were available in Lehigh County on Thursday, and “a bad traffic accident on Route 22 or a tragic gas explosion would fill those beds.”
Another Le high County Democrat, Rep. Peter Schweyer, said the virus is not being contained.
“The current spike of confirmed COVID-19 cases is significantly higher than any we experienced in March or April. Our health care professionals are legitimately scared,” Schweyer said.
No one was happy with Wolf’s announcement, Schweyer said.
“It will no doubt cause harm to those small businesses, cooks, servers and others in the restaurant industry. But honestly, at this point, we are in a real crisis and there aren’t many options left,” Schweyer said.
State Sen. Lisa Boscola, a Northampton County Democrat, said Wolf’s latest moves “show his heart is too small when it comes to small businesses, especially during this holiday season.”
Boscola also said Wolf ’s temporary yet broad economic shutdowns are sending inconsistent and unclear messages.
Republican U.S. Rep. Fred Keller said Wolf’s action would further devastate the state’s economy.
“To put it plainly, shutdowns do not work,” Keller said. “As with his previous order, the governor’s latest shutdown will advantage big box stores, destroy countless small businesses and restaurants, and cause more harm than it solves.”
Businesses take hit
For restaurants, breweries, wineries and distilleries, the three-week shutdown is a tough blow.
Frack, the gym owner, said he planned to stay open unless financial relief is on the way.
“Until then, we’re just not going to close our doors,” said Frack, who employs three people. He added, “You can’t just pull the trigger without having a plan in place.”
Anthony Brichta, co-owner of County Seat Spirits, a distillery with locations in Easton and Allentown, said he would comply with the order.
“It’s definitely going to hurt us at a prime time of the year, when you kind of need foot traffic that leads to retail sales of bottles,” he said.
With indoor dining banned, County Seat will rely more on curbside pickup and local delivery of bottles as well as bottled and canned cocktails. It also will continue to offer outdoor seating in its Igloo, a lit, sanitized and heated structure.
“We’re going to do everything we can to not cut anyone’s hours,” said Brichta.
The orders also will idle Pennsylvania’s ground-based casino industry, which includes 12 fullscale casinos, one mini-casino and employs 16,000 people.
Wind Creek Bethlehem, which employs about 1,600 people, cut about 450 jobs in September due the pandemic’s effect on its business.
The casino did not provide a comment Thursday night on Wolf’s order, but a news release from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board listed Wind Creek among the casinos that will cease “gaming activities and patron entry” by 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
During the shutdown, Mount Airy Casino Resort in Monroe County said its casino, hotel, spa, golf course and restaurants will be closed to the public, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager Frank Leone said in a statement.
He said essential staff will remain on-site to assist with cleaning, sanitizing and maintaining the property.
The company said it would pay its employees for the duration of the shutdown.
School sports on pause
The sports shutdown comes one day before the start of the scholastic winter sports season, which includes boys and girls basketball, boys and girls swimming and wrestling.
However, the impact will be minimal in the Lehigh Valley since both the Colonial League and Eastern Pennsylvania Conference recently delayed the start of their seasons with the EPC moving the start of games to Jan. 15 and the Colonial League shifting the start to Jan. 11.
Only a handful of schools had decided to schedule events prior to the end of the year.
On Friday night, several nonleague basketball games were scheduled, including Notre Dame-Green Pond at Executive and Pottsville Nativity at Allentown Central Catholic in boys basketball on Friday night.
Notre Dame was set to play at Northwestern Lehigh and CCHS was slated to play at Exeter on Saturday afternoon.
And the PIAA announced Wednesday it was reducing the number of qualifying teams for its basketball and wrestling tournaments and moved back the deadline for basketball to give each league and district more time to get in games.