INSIDE:
Restaurants, other businesses reopen with restrictions
Dozens of states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and running, acting at their own speed and with their own restrictions and quirks to make sure the coronavirus doesn’t come storming back.
GRETNA, La. — More than a dozen states let restaurants, stores or other businesses reopen Friday in the biggest one-day push yet to get their economies up and running again, acting at their own speed and with their own quirks and restrictions to make sure the coronavirus doesn’t come storming back.
People in Louisiana could eat at restaurants again but had to sit outside at tables 10 feet apart with no waiter service. Maine residents could attend church services as long as they stayed in their cars. And a Nebraska mall reopened with plexiglass barriers and hand-sanitizing stations but few shoppers.
“I feel like I just got out of jail!” accountant Joy Palermo exclaimed as she sat down with a bacon-garnished bloody Mary at the Gretna Depot Cafe outside New Orleans.
The virus has killed more than 237,000 people worldwide, including over 64,000 in the U.S. and more than 20,000 each in Italy, Britain, France and Spain, forcing lockdowns that have shuttered factories and businesses, thrown tens of millions out of work and throttled the world’s economies.
With the crisis stabilizing in Europe and in many places in the U.S., countries and states are gradually easing their restrictions amid warnings from health experts that a second wave of infections could hit unless testing for the virus is expanded dramatically.
In much of Colorado, people could get their hair cut and shop at stores again, though stay-at-home orders remained in place in Denver and surrounding counties. Wyoming let barbershops, nail salons, gyms and day care centers reopen. In Maine, golf courses, hairdressers and dentists opened.
Hotels near South Carolina beaches opened and state parks unlocked their gates for the first time in more than a month. But in Myrtle Beach, the state’s most popular tourist destination, hotel elevators will be restricted to one person or one family — a potential inconvenience at the area’s 15- and 20-story resorts.
Texas’ reopening got underway with sparse crowds at shopping malls and restaurants allowing customers to dine in, though only at 25% capacity.
Outside Omaha, Nebraska, Jasmine Ramos was among a half-dozen shoppers wandering the open-air Nebraska Crossing mall. Most wore masks.
“I do think it’s a little soon, but it’s kind of slow and there aren’t a lot of people here, so I’m not too worried,” Ramos said.
Around the country, protesters have demanded governors reboot the battered economy. More than 100 people chanted and carried signs in front of Chicago’s Thompson Center, where Gov. J.B. Pritzker has an office, to call for an end to the statewide lockdown.
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Friday
that the state’s stay-athome order remains in effect through May 15 despite Republicans’ refusal to extend her underlying coronavirus emergency declaration, as she amended it to allow construction, real estate and more outdoor work to resume in person next week.
The Democratic governor, who may be sued by the GOP-led Legislature, addressed reporters the same day that President Donald Trump tweeted she should “make a deal” with conservatives who protested her restrictions at the Capitol a day earlier. She denounced the protest as “disturbing,” noting there were swastikas, Confederate flags, nooses and some people with assault weapons who “do not represent who we are as Michiganders.”
In the hardest-hit corner of the U.S., New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said schools and colleges will remain closed through the rest of the academic year.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham invoked the state’s Riot Control Act as she sealed off all roads to nonessential traffic in the city of Gallup, population 70,000, to help control a surging coronavirus outbreak in the former trading post on the outskirts of a Navajo reservation.
Elsewhere around the world, Beijing’s Forbidden City, the imperial palace turned museum started welcoming visitors again, and Bangladesh began reopening factories.
Across Europe and Asia, millions of workers marked May Day, or international labor day, trapped between hunger and fear.
In Turkey, protesters attempted to stage an unauthorized demonstration. Paris residents held a musical protest against the French government’s handling of the crisis, singing from balconies and windows to plead for workplace masks, health insurance and more aid for the jobless.
In Greece, demonstrators lined up 6 feet apart in careful rows in Athens’ Syntagma Square. Organizers in masks and gloves used tape measures and large colored squares to set out exact positions for the protesters.