In addition to our normal news coverage, What Now Atlanta is tracking ways Atlanta’s businesses are adapting to the novel coronavirus and the challenges it brings to brick-and-mortars.
Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday signed the “Empowering a Healthy Georgia” Executive Order, the state’s latest response to COVID-19.
The new mandate goes into effect at 12 a.m. on June 16, 2020, and runs through 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 2020, lifting a gamut of restrictions placed on citizens and businesses earlier this year.
Among the order’s highlights is the ability for restaurants to continue operating at normal capacity (no longer a cap based on square footage) and salad bars and buffets can resume service.
Restaurant employees are also no longer required to wear face coverings except for when interacting with guests directly and bars can now have fifty people (up from twenty-five) or thirty-five percent of total listed fire capacity, whichever is greater.
The original list of 39 safety guidelines for reopening restaurants has been reduced to 35 under the new order (read them here on pages nine and 10 of the EO).
Other brick-and-mortar businesses including movie theatres and beauty operations are also getting an easement in restrictions.
There will no longer be a limit on the number of people who may sit together in a movie theatre and walk-ins will be allowed at body art studios, barbershops, hair salons, their respective schools, massage therapy establishments, and tanning facilities.
Live Performance Venues starting on July 1 may reopen for business if it “complies with specific criteria” which is outlined in the executive order here.
Click here to read the executive order in its entirety.
[Editor’s note: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is rapidly evolving as is its effect on Atlanta, and the City’s businesses and its residents. Click here for What Now Atlanta’s ongoing coverage of the crisis. For guidance and updates on the pandemic, please visit the C.D.C. website.]
Ok, so is this all based on health professionals opinion?
Sure, president cheeto bone spurs is his sour e of medical information. Fla listens as well and day after day the numbers there keep going up up up. And you know up is better than down. Down bad…..
If you go to a buffet right now… I just… OK.
I dunno, all you can eat, and herd immunity kinda makes sense.
Face book and fox both say it’s safe…..
What a fool. He thought the NRC was coming to georgia!
Yup, he got played.
That photo of him he looks like he’s really confused, or about to cry– maybe both.
That’s because he hasn’t had his coke yet…
Well he needs to stay off the soft drinks then…
Oh how could I forget to insist on listening to the man who didn’t know coronavirus was transmitted though the air two months after I did. He used his medical resources then too as well……..