Some restaurants hang on to mask rules

WALNUT CREEK >> Darryl Wong, a manager at downtown's Burma 2, has had one fewer worry since Contra Costa County last week stopped requiring restaurants and gyms to check indoor customers for proof that they're fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

With the mandate now lifted, Wong doesn't have to deal with disgruntled patrons who resent showing their CDC cards or can't get in because they didn't get the jab. But at the same time, he acknowledges, the order helped protect his staff and prevent virus outbreaks.

So even as COVID19-driven health orders start getting peeled back — Contra Costa and almost all Bay Area counties followed California's lead Wednesday in easing mask rules — Wong is still drawing a line.

Burma 2 is one of a number of restaurants across the county that will voluntarily continue enforcing maskwearing indoors.

“If one of my staff gets infected, or if the infection reaches the kitchen, then we're out for the week,” Wong said. “If that happens, we can't afford it. Our bottom line would just die.”

Though he has mixed feelings about the vaccination-proof mandate, Wong decided to drop it as soon as the county did. It's been far more controversial than any mask mandate since Contra Costa became the first Bay Area county to impose it. San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have established similar orders, but the other counties never did despite a surge of the highly contagious omicron variant during the holidays.

As uncomfortable as situations sometimes got, businesses at least could tell customers it was the county health department's fault they had to check vaccination-proof cards. Now there's no one to take the blame.

“I think the county was trying to do whatever they thought would keep people safe, but it didn't really make a lot of sense since we have so many folks come here from Alameda County,” said Sean Harrigan, co-owner of Hazy Barbecue in Danville. “It really was an impossible task for us to try to box out COVID from our restaurant or any other restaurant.”

When Contra Costa Health Services announced earlier this month it would end the vaccination-proof requirement, it noted that more than 80% of residents had received both doses.

But that percentage included only those who received initial doses, not the booster shots, Contra Costa Health Officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli said at a Board of Supervisors meeting last week.

“The order was asking businesses to check for fully vaccinated, but `fully vaccinated' is no longer the best possible protection,” Tzvieli said. “Boosting gives you a whole lot more protection, both against becoming a case but also against becoming hospitalized or even dying.”

Fewer than half of the county's residents have received a booster dose. So rather than add booster shots to the definition of fully vaccinated for cardchecking purposes, the county decided to drop the mandate altogether.

“I just don't see our health officials saying, `You have to get boosted or you can't do this or that' as a ploy to get people boosted,” Supervisor Karen Mitchoff said in an interview.

During a visit to Oakland last week to sign a law extending COVID-19-related sick leave, Gov. Gavin Newsom similarly indicated booster mandates aren't foremost in his mind.

“The bottom line for us,” Newsom said, “is to continue to encourage people to get boosted, continue to make the point that boosters are critical… to mitigate this omicron surge.”

If Contra Costa isn't eager to return to vaccination-proof mandates, recent history suggests why. Some businesses resisted the mandate from the outset. In-N-Out Burger refused to enforce the rules at its indoor restaurants, prompting health officials at one point to temporarily suspend the chain's Pleasant Hill location.

And when county health officials quietly decided to educate recalcitrant businesses instead of enforcing the mandate, the Board of Supervisors criticized them after reading this news organization's reporting on how no restaurants were fined in November despite 80 public complaints being lodged against them.

Members of the public continued flagging possible rule-breakers up until the order was lifted. The county received 46 complaints in January — 27 for both maskwearing and vaccinationcheck violations, and 19 for vaccination checks alone.

In follow-up visits, health inspectors issued a $1,000 fine to a Fuddruckers restaurant in Concord and educated 13 other businesses. They also determined seven restaurants appeared to be following the rules.

By the time the omicron surge was in full swing, however, even residents who had received two vaccine doses were catching COVID-19.

Miriam Gusta, a manager at Telefèric Barcelona in Walnut Creek, said the holidays saw many cancellations and several fully vaccinated staff members came down with the virus.

Health officials say the enforcement and education helped build compliance among restaurants. But its unclear whether they influenced people to go get the shots.

“I'm not sure that it encouraged anyone to get vaccinated,” Mitchoff said. “I never looked at it that way. It was a way to make sure that healthy people were the ones dining indoors safely. And now, if you've gotten two doses, you've obviously said to yourself, `it's important to get these vaccinations.' So why would you not get your booster if you can?”