Inside dining could be on table soon

Despite push from restaurant and hospitality industries, Lamont wants to err on side of caution

Restaurants can start serving customers outside next week and if all goes well, they can start serving them inside around June 20, Gov. Ned Lamont said Wednesday.

For some businesspeople, that’s not soon enough.

On Wednesday, a group identifying its members as leaders of trade associations and companies that supply the restaurant and hospitality industries, called on the governor to accelerate the reopening of restaurants.

“We believe that limited, safe indoor dining is possible, and ask that a 50 percent capacity be allowed indoors beginning June 3, 14 days after other businesses are allowed to begin some operations indoors,” the group said in a letter that bore more than 130 signatures, including more than two-dozen from southeastern Connecticut. “Doing so would keep many local restaurants from going out of business in the weeks ahead.”

Lamont responded to the letter during his daily news briefing on the state’s coronavirus response. He was joined in the remote session by two state senators who own dining establishments — Paul Formica, an East Lyme Republican who runs Flanders Fish Market, and Christine Cohen, a Guilford Democrat whose family owns Cohen’s Bagel Company in Madison.

“I’m going to err on the side of caution,” Lamont said, indicating he plans to stick to the outside-only dining edict when his partial reopening of some nonessential businesses takes effect Wednesday.

“I think we’re going to get the inside dining but I think it’s not simply a matter of the state saying June 20. It’s also a matter of giving consumers confidence,” he said. “They’ll go to Flanders Fish Market a couple times, they’ll see the waiters are wearing masks, they’re using the proper hygiene, everything’s 6 feet apart. And I think over a period of time they’ll be more comfortable going inside, as well. So, it’s not simply our dictate.”

Formica, whose restaurant has been limited to takeout and delivery service since the middle of March, agreed that the public’s reaction to the first phase of the reopening will be critical.

“It’s up to the people to take personal responsibility if we’re going to make this work,” he said. “In our restaurant, we’ve been taking the temperatures of our staff every shift, providing masks and gloves long before the requirement to do so came out just to make sure we were safe.”

He said the state should be open to “analyzing the numbers” surrounding the May 20 reopening before deciding how to proceed thereafter.

“Let’s take a look at June 3 and not say it’s absolutely out of the question because it’s a date,” Formica said. “Let’s proceed cautiously and if it’s

healthy and safe to open up (inside dining), whether it’s 50% or 25% or whatever it is, we can open up.”

Cohen, who said she was “extremely concerned” about the reopening, closed her bagel shop to indoor dining out of concern for the safety of her employees and customers before Lamont issued the executive order requiring it.

Lamont acknowledged that some restaurants will decline to open May 20 and that the public’s response is hard to predict.

“May 20 is not a light switch that gets turned on,” he said.

The path to the partial reopening remained clear Wednesday despite an uptick in the number of deaths associated with COVID-19, according to the governor’s office. The total number of cases in the state grew by 522 to 34,855, while 84 additional deaths brought the toll to 3,125. Tests for the disease were up 142,943, an increase of 4,122.

Hospitalizations, considered a key indicator of the disease’s path, were down by 31 to 1,158.

In New London County, 11 additional cases raised the total to 804. Two more deaths were recorded for a total of 60. Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London reported 20 COVID-19 patients while Westerly Hospital had none. Backus Hospital in Norwich was treating six patients with the disease.