SALEM — The city’s Board of Health will vote Wednesday on rolling back COVID-19 restrictions to Phase Two, Step One of the state’s reopening guidelines, which would ban indoor dining in the city.
The agenda for the board’s meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday reads: “Discussion and vote on potential temporary additional COVID restrictions, including rolling back to the beginning of Phase Two of the Commonwealth’s phased reopening process.”
In addition to shutting down indoor dining, returning to Phase Two, Step One would restrict access to hair care, massage therapy, skin care, tanning salons and tattoo parlors.
“(The Board of Health) is in a situation that no one wants to be in. Absolutely no one in the city wants to close down any business.” said Ward Three Councillor Patti Morsillo, who has been involved in Board of Health conversations as the city council liaison. She was not certain whether a vote would actually occur Wednesday.
“I think that there was more support for rolling things back and tightening restrictions back in October,” she said. “It’s hard to support shutting down restaurants or any business. But if that’s what they feel is the best thing to do, then they’ll do that.”
Restaurant owners like Justin Mattera expressed concerns on social media about the harmful effects of a possible indoor dining shutdown.
“We’ve been whittled down to nothing, so shutting us down now would be insanity,” said Mattera, who owns Longboards and Popped Gourmet Popcorn. “It’s one thing to shut us down as a state, but to shut down only Salem, when our people can walk or drive half a mile to Beverly or Danvers or Swampscott–it’s ridiculous.”
Mattera argued that recently released state data didn’t support the idea that COVID-19 cases were being spread at restaurants.
“We’re being blamed, but if you look at the numbers it just doesn’t say it,” he said.
A report released Thursday by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health seems to back up this assertion, stating that that the majority of new COVID-19 cases came from exposure within the household.
Some 46,534 cases in the last month were caused by household exposure, while only 275 were caused by exposure at a restaurant, food court or another food establishment.
“The data shows that most of the spread was household groups, but it doesn’t show where the first person got the disease and how they brought it into the household,” said Morsillo. “People aren’t wrong when they look at the data and say that it doesn’t support that the spread is happening at restaurants. But it’s also true that the data is really incomplete.”
At a meeting on Dec. 17, the Board of Health postponed a vote to roll back to Phase Two, Step Two in hopes of discussing the idea with Dave Roberts, the president of North Shore Medical Center, before reaching a decision.
Salem restaurants have been hard hit by the pandemic, with several announcing temporary closures in recent months.
The Derby announced in mid-December that it would be hibernating for the winter — the latest in a cluster of restaurants that were forced to shut down for the offseason.
Mattera hoped that PPP funding from the new stimulus package would take some of the strain off small businesses, but he said that restaurants need relief now.
“Everyone says that funding is coming. They say it might come in February,” said Mattera. “People need access to money right now.”
Salem residents have also been hard hit by the virus. Data released by the city Dec. 17 showed that there were currently 319 active cases, with a 6.56 percent test positivity rate. A total of 58 Salem residents have died from the virus.
“They’re all of the same mindset,” Morsillo said regarding the Board of Health. “That we have to have a public discussion about what’s happening currently in Salem and what our options are for protecting public health.”
