Tennessee’s Shelby County unveiled its Back to Business plan to reopen the economy, but it has not announced a start date.
The county, the city of Memphis and six suburban municipalities announced they will reopen the economy in phases, but they will not enter into phase one until the county has a flat or negative growth rate in COVID-19 cases for 14 consecutive days and meets certain testing and capacity benchmarks.
Phase one would allow nonessential businesses to reopen at limited capacity if the businesses have limited contact with customers. This would include restaurants, gyms and retail stores, but not nail salons, barber shops or other businesses that require close contact. Entertainment and recreation venues still would be closed.
Restaurants, bars and retail stores would be allowed to operate at 50 percent capacity in the first phase. Restaurants and bars would need to adjust the dining layout to enforce social distancing between groups and use only noncommunal silverware and throw-away menus. Employees at retail stores who interact with customers would have to wear masks.
Gyms would be able to operate at 25 percent capacity, and machines would have to be placed at least 6 feet apart. Employees would have to wear masks and customers would be required to wipe down surfaces with disinfectant wipes before and after use. Workouts would be limited to 45 minutes.
Other nonessential businesses could open at limited capacity. Churches and other places of worship could operate at 25 percent capacity during this phase.
Purposeful gatherings of 10 or more people still would be banned.
Stricter benchmarks would need to be reached to enter into the next phases, which gradually would reduce restrictions.
Gov. Bill Lee allowed the reopening of restaurants Monday for the 89 counties that are under the direction Tennessee Department of Health, retail shops can reopen Wednesday and gyms can reopen Friday. Six counties – Shelby, Madison, Davidson, Hamilton, Knox and Sullivan – have their own health departments and are opening on their own schedules.
Madison, Hamilton and Sullivan counties reopened parts of their economies Monday. Knox County has set the start date for reopening restaurants, retail shops and gyms as Friday. Davidson County has unveiled a similar plan to Lee and Shelby County, but also it also not yet decided on a start date for reopening.
Lee has said he believes the counties will reopen on a schedule that are complementary to each other and the state.
Tennessee has surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 cases. The Department of Health reported Tuesday there were 10,052 cases, including 188 deaths. more than 4,900 people have recovered, 881 are hospitalized and 161,926 tests have been conducted.
COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus. The disease has caused at least 58,906 deaths in the U.S., with more than 1.03 million confirmed cases in the country. COVID-19 symptoms appear within two to 14 days after exposure and include fever, cough, difficulty breathing, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell.
