Massachusetts officials are moving ahead with the state's reopening plan even as some states around the country are reporting rising numbers of COVID-19 cases. As of Monday, the reopening includes massage therapists, nail salons, tattoo parlors and indoor dining — with strict social distancing rules in place.
Matt Murphy from the State House News Service joins us to talk through the rules as the second part of phase two of the state's reopening gets underway.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: The rules for indoor dining begin with — as most restrictions on business — six feet of social distancing. So all tables set up inside restaurants must be separated six feet apart.
If not, the administration has allowed for tables to be closer together, but you would have to install at least a six-foot Plexiglas barrier between all tables.
Other rules include no seating at bars, and parties would be capped at six people per table. And you are supposed to wear masks and social distance throughout the restaurant when you're not seated at your table and eating.
So these are becoming sort of familiar patterns as businesses reopen. But this is the next phase as we go to restaurants, nail salons, other close-contact businesses, like massage parlors. And in all of these places, individuals will have to be distant, separated six feet from each other.
Of course, not your nail person, or your masseuse, but from other customers — though this is what the new normal looks like.
Carrie Healy, NEPR: Even with the numbers falling, there are more than 900 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Massachusetts. We're still seeing a couple dozen deaths per day, and there are huge decisions lying ahead around K-12 education. How close is the state to issuing some long-awaited guidance to local school districts?
We're expecting a full set of guidance from the Department of Early Education and Secondary Education this month.
Commissioner Jeff Riley has already given districts some advanced notification, telling them to stock up on supplies of PPE. It appears from that guidance that masks will be required for all students that can wear one, as well as staff.
Again, desks would have to be separated six feet apart to keep that social distance, which would also mean smaller class sizes, and probably smaller student-to-teacher ratios.
But the rest of the plan, we are still waiting to see. Like I said, they said sometime in June this would probably be going out to the districts.
So what we've heard a lot of talk about are things like staggered schedules, where some students may go for part of a week, some for the second half of the week. A lot of this could be left up to local districts, depending on their size.
Secretary of Education James Peyser has also suggested that virtual learning, while they are trying to bring schools back online, is not going away completely. And that will also be a part of the planning.
The state gaming commission is expected to make a move Tuesday on minimum safety standards before regulators let casinos reopen. The casino operators were not too hot on the draft proposals that they discussed last week. Which ones have MGM, and the other companies, concerned?
A lot of new restrictions are being looked at as they try to think about how to safely start gambling again.
They start with things like no poker, craps or roulette tables being open. Blackjack tables would have to have plexiglass installed to separate players would have to wear masks.
And they're also contemplating the idea of capacity limits in these casinos.
And it wasn't that one thing jumped outto some of the operators, but they were concerned about the cumulative effect of doing all of these things. They weren't quite sure how they would comply with capacity limits without having a better idea of how much staff they would need on hand on the floors to also service those patrons, and keep within the capacity limits.
So they were going to go back and look, and review all of these things, and see whether or not they could make it work, and communicate back with the gaming commission. There does seem to be a constructive dialogue there.
But it's going to be a tricky thing to bring these casinos back online in a way that may be even more restrictive than we've seen in some other states, like Connecticut.
