LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – As restaurants, retailers and other businesses reopen in Kentucky and Indiana, governors in both states have adopted measures meant to keep employees and customers safe.
Those safeguards include daily health checks for workers -- such as taking their temperatures -- in an effort to detect COVID-19 symptoms. One New Albany, Ind., eatery is checking patrons for signs of fever before they enter.
But there’s another challenge as the states’ economies gradually expand: Safeguarding against the potential spread of the disease by people who don’t know even they’re infected.
The New England Journal of Medicine called asymptomatic spread the “Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control” in an editorial last month, citing data from a Washington state nursing home where half of the residents who tested positive didn’t have symptoms.
Meanwhile, an Indiana study in late April found that nearly 45 percent of Hoosiers who tested positive for COVID-19 during random screenings reported no symptoms at all.
Temperature checks and other ways to detect outward signs of the virus are still important, said Dr. Eric Yazel, Clark County, Ind.’s health officer.
“It's still necessary because most of the data shows that your rate of infectivity is higher the more symptomatic you are, so that's still an important step for us and our different businesses and facilities,” he said. “But, you're right, it's not a free pass that everybody's OK. You could still have no symptoms at all and still be infected as well.”
Indiana health commissioner Dr. Kris Box said this week that a “significant amount of spread” comes from asymptomatic carriers. While it’s not mandatory, Box urged Hoosiers going out in public to wear masks or face coverings.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April advised people to wear cloth masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19, including from those who don’t know they have it.
“Cloth face coverings can prevent you from spreading the virus to others,” Box said. “Here’s another way to look at it: My mask protects you, and your mask protects me.”
There is no scientific consensus on how effective masks are in keeping an infected person from giving it to someone else. But a widely-watched Hong Kong study released earlier this week concluded that wearing a mask can cut COVID-19 transmission by up to 75 percent.
Speaking in Indianapolis on Wednesday, Gov. Eric Holcomb said wearing a mask is the “number one” step Hoosiers can take when they’re around others in public.
In Kentucky, establishments “must ensure, to the greatest extent practicable” that their employees wear masks unless the coverings cause a health or safety concern or workers are alone in an area where they’re more than six feet apart from coworkers, according to Gov. Andy Beshear’s guidance.
The governor’s plan says businesses should encourage customers to wear masks, but they’re not required to do so. However, it adds, “[e]ntities may refuse to serve any customer who is not wearing a mask.”
In general, Beshear advises Kentuckians to wear masks when they’re in public. He said this week that “it’s about protecting other people.”
“I get that some people don’t want to wear one, but it’s not about you. It’s about everybody else that you could be infecting,” he said. “And we always see the stories about people who don’t think they’ll spread something and therefore don’t take steps and when they do there’s a profound guilt that may go along with it.”
Most of the handful of shoppers at Oxmoor Center were wearing masks when the mall reopened around 11 a.m. Wednesday, as malls and other retail businesses resumed operations in Kentucky. Many stores remained closed.
A spokeswoman for Oxmoor and Mall St. Matthews did not respond to a question about how many stores have adopted policies requiring customers to wear masks.
On Friday, restaurants in Kentucky can resume operations at one-third of their previous capacity. Servers also are required to wear masks.
Beshear recommends that restaurants create policies on whether diners must wear masks when they’re away from their table and booth and not eating or drinking.
Stacy Roof, president and CEO of the Kentucky Restaurant Association, said she believes more restaurants than not will require diners to wear masks. She said there has been some concern about possible spread from asymptomatic customers
A common theme she said she has heard from restaurant owners is: “I’m not going to ask my employees do anything I wouldn’t ask my customers to do.”
“I think the restaurant business has lost so much the last couple of months, they want to do anything and everything to go above and beyond,” she said.
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