Diners in New York City have seen their social media feeds flooded in recent days with restaurant after restaurant announcements that they had to temporarily close because employees tested positive for Covid-19 or were exposed to the virus.
“I feel like it happened in three days,” said Cat Alexander, who closed her restaurant Pheasant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Wednesday after an employee received a positive test result. She is waiting for her remaining 22 employees to test negative before reopening.
At least a dozen restaurants and bars have been temporarily closed this week as the reported number of new Covid cases in New York City has risen to an average of 3,554 per day in New York City, a 135 percent increase from the two-week average. , according to a DailyExpertNews database.
Restorers said cases reported so far have been mild, but they expected closures to increase as businesses try to protect employees and customers from infection. The restaurants include Contento in Harlem, Temperance Wine Bar in the West Village, and several in Brooklyn: Otway in Clinton Hill, LaLou in Prospect Heights, Winona’s in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Di An Di in Greenpoint.
“It was pretty unbelievable and shocking to me the speed at which it could spread in such a safe environment,” said Jamie Erickson, the owner of Poppy’s, a cafe in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Her 30-person staff is vaccinated and always masked at work, but the Red Hook cafe’s commissary kitchen is closed the weekend after Thanksgiving due to a Covid outbreak.
Cases of coronavirus have led to similar shutdowns across the country as both the Delta and Omicron variants have progressed. There have been restaurant closures in Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia. New Mexico, Oregon, Hawaii and other states.
The New York City shutdowns, as they now happen to several Broadway shows, come in the midst of the holiday season, normally one of the busiest times of the year for those businesses.
As in the summer, when the Delta variant became the predominant strain of the coronavirus in the United States, restaurant owners are once again forced to review their safety protocols and feel inadequately supported by local and state governments.
New York City has some of the strictest vaccine requirements in the country, requiring employees and indoor restaurants to provide proof of vaccination. On Monday, Governor Kathy Hochul ordered all covered businesses in the state to require customers to wear masks unless the businesses have protocols in place for requiring proof of vaccination.
Many restaurants go beyond the official requirements – at Pheasant, the entire staff is not only fully vaccinated (several employees have been given booster shots), but they are also required to wear masks. Ms Alexander hopes she can reopen on Thursday evening, but she is at the mercy of the speed of the test centers to deliver results. Many test centers face long lines and delays.
As the number of Covid cases rises, the question for many restaurant owners is how to manage their exposure while keeping their business afloat.
On Wednesday, an employee of Di An Di, a Vietnamese restaurant in Greenpoint, tested positive for the virus. Dennis Ngo, an owner, said he wanted to reopen as soon as workers got a negative result on a PCR test or two consecutive rapid tests. He said some of the nearby testing centers he visited on Wednesday had run out of rapid tests.
“I am very surprised,” said Mr. ng. “I thought we were over this test bump.”
He said that while all 30 of his employees had been vaccinated and Covid cases were unlikely to get them hospitalized, they would lose revenue at a crucial time of gift buying and bill payment. The restaurant can also lose significant revenue from large holiday dinners.
Mr. Ngo is thinking about reintroducing delivery and takeaway, in case he has to close the indoor restaurants again. “I foolishly thought we got over this,” he said.
Brent Young, who closed his Cozy Royale restaurant in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Wednesday, said he had received “zero guidance” from city and state officials about what to do if an employee tests positive for Covid.
“Even the CDC website says if you don’t have any symptoms, just go about your normal life,” he said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “So I think we’re going to exceed that recommendation by having everyone isolate and do a test.”
The sudden increase in the number of coronaviruses in the city is likely due to the Delta variant and the growing number of indoor gatherings for the holiday season, said Dr. Larry Brilliant, a California-based epidemiologist who was part of the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. The Omicron variant is still quite new, he said, but it is the most portable of all the existing variants.
The Northeast, especially New York City, is a popular gateway to the virus and its variants because of tourism, said Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard University. “Where New York City is going is where we expect the rest of the country to be,” he said.
Especially at many restaurants the loss of turnover due to closure just before Christmas is great. Because an employee tested positive on Tuesday, Contento in Harlem will be closed at least until Saturday. This meant canceling a major private event and sitting out one of the most lucrative weeks of the year, says Yannick Benjamin, Contento’s sommelier. (This week, the restaurant was ranked #4 on DailyExpertNews critic Pete Wells’ list of the city’s 10 best new restaurants of the year.)
Mr Benjamin said the restaurant has Covid tests on hand for employees; they have all been vaccinated and many have been boosted.
“I can’t imagine how much more rigid we can be” with employees, he said. It’s hard to control their actions when so much of the city is open for business. No matter how diligent people are, he said, “Things happen.”
At the Clinton Hill cafe Otway, there are two separate day and night staff, so that if someone from one team tests positive, the other team can still work and not a whole work day is lost. On Tuesday, an employee reported that he had been exposed to Covid-19, so the owner, Samantha Safer, closed the dinner service the following evening. She estimated that she lost $4,000 to $8,000 in that one night.
What particularly frightens her is that, no matter how safe her employees are, some guests don’t show the same courtesy. She said a server overheard three indoor diners “talking about how they may have been exposed to Covid.”
Ms. Safer isn’t taking any chances this New Year’s Eve, usually the restaurant’s most profitable night. In addition to showing their vaccination certificate, she said, diners will have to produce a negative result from a recent test.