At this time last year, Jacqueline Canter took about 100 employees to spend her birthday over the phone, hoping that she would eventually get gym disinfectant wipes back to work.
“It’s so heartbreaking,” the co-owners of Canter’s Delicatessen said Monday. “I don’t know [the pandemic] will last for a year.”
“Now that we are open, it is certainly a good birthday,” Kanter said on Monday. “My birthday wish came true.”
Months after the COVID-19 closure, Los Angeles County has unlocked a large part of its hard-hit commercial sector, allowing dining in restaurants and resumption of indoor activities in gyms, movie theaters, and other venues.
Both the owners and employees hope that the latest round of reopening — driven by the decline in the number of new coronavirus cases and the increase in vaccination rates — can provide a much-needed boost to the region’s economy.
But business as usual is still a distant concept. Those open places are still limited by how many customers can be served at one time, as well as physical distance and mask requirements.
As Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrell pointed out on Monday, “Just because certain activities are allowed or certain reopening agreements are modified, it does not mean that these activities are 100% safe and risk-free.”
She said at a briefing: “We are still in a pandemic. Whenever there are more opportunities to interact with non-family members, the virus will spread more.” “But we do have the power to protect ourselves from spreading. Added tools. We just need to use them instead of complacency.”
The wider reopening of Los Angeles is due to its upgrade from the strictest purple level in the state’s four-level coronavirus roadmap to a more permissive red level.
A dozen other counties-Orange, San Bernardino, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Placer, Mendocino, San Benito, Tuolumne, Siskiyou , Amador, Colusa and Mono-also made official progress over the weekend.
The change from purple to red has cleared the way for these counties: allowed to dine in restaurants and movie theaters with 25% capacity; personally welcome students from grades 7 to 12 back to school; reopen indoor gyms and dances at 10% capacity And yoga studios; and expand the capacity limits of non-essential stores and libraries.
Los Angeles County will allow theaters, restaurants, gyms, and more to reopen on Monday. As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to decline, these changes will follow.
Franks Enriquez, wife Sarah, and their 1-year-old daughter Skylynn watched an 8-foot wolf eel at the Long Beach Aquarium when they found another family approaching. They took a step back and kept their distance from the other group of people.
After spending a few months indoors, leaving only for work or other necessary trips, the Bay Area couple was encouraged by the rising vaccination rate and declining infection levels, and they went to Long Beach to visit their families.
Starting from April 1, the amusement park in Red Line County can be reopened at 15% of the capacity, with other modifications. Attractions such as Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain will initially be required to restrict visitors to California residents.
Outdoor sports and outdoor live performances with fans will also be allowed to resume on April 1st, provided that capacity and franchise sales restrictions are complied with, which vary depending on the county’s tier allocation.
Restaurants, gyms and other businesses in Orange County and San Bernardino County will reopen for indoor operations on Sunday.
Kanter and her brother Mark said they worked until midnight on Sunday to prepare for the deli to reopen.
They had to adjust the refrigeration equipment that had not been used for nine months, turn on the power to the main dining room and move the tables so that they were eight feet apart. They wipe the tables, booths, and anything else that needs to be disinfected.
“Usually, people come here for soup on a rainy day,” Jacqueline Canter said. “But today, the rain did not help us.”
Among them is Bob Knee, 72, who has been in this restaurant since he was 16 years old. He ordered sausages and eggs and said that eating inside felt “normal again”.
Elizabeth Núñez, 32, is a waitress who was fired by Canter a year ago. She stayed at home to take care of her four children-acting as a cook, waitress, mother and teacher, sometimes at the same time.
According to the early part of the parent survey, about half of the students plan to return to campus. Regions hit hard by COVID-19 are less enthusiastic.
Cecilia Maya, 33, and Jennifer Rivera, 21, were among the customers who ventured into the Lakewood collaborative coffee bar.
Another group of people, some of whom are regulars, sit on sofas and chairs beside coffee tables, while a barista—the shopkeeper—takes orders and makes drinks.
Maya and Rivera didn’t expect this store to open indoors, but considering the drizzle in the morning, it was a surprise.
“I didn’t think we could sit indoors,” Maya said. “You just adapted to this kind of life.”
Collaborative Coffee, like many other coffee shops in the county, creates an outdoor space for customers. But for Rivera and Maya, the situation is different.
“I think [outdoor] people are just staring at you and asking,’Are you leaving?’” Rivera said. “Indoors, you just shudder. Here, I can set up camp.”
The two friends said that they felt safe in Collaborative because its seats are far away and can accommodate up to about 9 people.
When 30-year-old owner Robert Lopez saw news that some county-level businesses would be able to open indoor seats with limited capacity, his thoughts immediately turned to his cafe and how to reorganize to safely accommodate people .
On Sunday, he re-arranged the seats himself, adding a few more seats in the sofa area, there is a small table nearby, and there is a bench and a table on the other side of the cafe.
By noon on Monday, the few vacancies in the coffee bar were all robbed. Lopez said he was happy to provide shelter for the morning rain.
But the atmosphere has closed. He said that even with positive changes, it is difficult to feel excited or hopeful.
“What if the thing we want is taken away right away?” Lopez said in an interview after the store closed. “It frustrates me. You want excitement and hope, but you just don’t know. It puts you in an unsafe place.
The past year made him feel distrustful of government officials. He questioned whether they really understood the difficulty of having to adapt again and again.
However, for Lopez, safety remains the top priority. One of his uncles was fighting for his life on a ventilator, and several of his friends died of COVID-19.
Unless government officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say he can gather more people without spreading the coronavirus, he will not feel that he is doing nothing.
Since the supply of vaccines throughout California is still limited, people are required to abide by the honor system.
On Monday morning, Haqumai Sharpe worked out at a LA Fitness in Inglewood, and was eager to go to the gym after not going to the gym for a year. The 47-year-old Sharp used to go to the gym at least four to five times a week; but during the blockade, he shifted his exercise to playing tennis and running around Inglewood.
Now that he has been vaccinated, Sharpe feels comfortable going back indoors to exercise, although he must arrive before noon so he can find a slightly remote place to lift weights.
Osho tried to exercise at home, but he missed the social element of exercising with others and tried to stay motivated.
Although Los Angeles won’t reopen until Monday, other counties—especially San Bernardino and Orange—opened their doors as soon as they were approved on Sunday.
Virginia Ramirez, the hostess of the Belgian waffle factory in Lake Arrowhead, said the popular family restaurant’s restaurant came under fire on Sunday morning. “We are really busy,” she said.
On-duty manager Robert Garcia (Robert Garcia) said that in the fashionable new American restaurant Social Costa Mesa, customers are eager to dine indoors.
“Business is very good now,” he said amidst the clinking of tableware and the chatter of customers. “I can’t complain. We are fortunate to have what is happening to us.”
John Connor, owner of Tudor House, the historic dinner theater in Lake Arrowhead, said: “It’s not a question of when the government says you can open up, but when people re-establish this convention. .”
Starting Monday, millions of Californians with previous health conditions or disabilities will be eligible to register for the COVID-19 vaccine.
In view of reaching the self-set goal of 2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the state’s most vulnerable communities, officials have revised California’s reopening blueprint, and it has recently become possible to broadly upgrade to the red level.
The county is divided into one of four color-coded tiers based on several factors: the rate of new coronavirus cases, the rate of positive results for test subjects, and the health equity indicators designed to ensure that the rate of positive cases in poorer communities is not comparable to the whole county How much difference is the overall figure?
Post time: Nov-24-2021