Miami-Dade restaurants to reopen after coronavirus shutdown. But is dining out safe?

Look at the bathrooms.

That’s the first thing the doctor who helped craft Miami-Dade’s guidelines for reopening restaurants is going to do when she dines out for the first time since coronavirus closed dining rooms.

“I’m a germaphobe. If the bathrooms are disgusting, I won’t eat there. I want to see that they were following the existing rules before COVID,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease specialist and professor at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine.

Miami-Dade County announced Wednesday it would allow restaurants to reopen May 18 and at 50 percent capacity, higher than the 25 percent Gov. Ron DeSantis had approved for the rest of the state. DeSantis signed off on the county’s exemption Thursday.

Several other cities, however, including Miami, Miami Beach and Miami Gardens, have banded together to say they will not allow restaurants to reopen until May 27.

That leaves Miami-Dade diners and restaurant workers with the most important question: How safe will it be to return to restaurants Monday?

“The risk of going to a restaurant is not going to be zero,” said Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, chair of the department of epidemiology at FIU’s college of public health. “It’s about trying to reduce the risk as much as possible.”

Dining at restaurants poses a particular challenge in controlling the spread of the coronavirus, largely because groups of people are tightly packed in an enclosed area where air is recirculated, Trepka and Marty agree.

A study out of China published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control shows how virus particles were blown across one restaurant in Guanzhou by air conditioning from an infected but asymptomatic patron, infecting nine others sitting at different tables.

And now, for the first time since governments imposed a stay-at-home order, people who have quarantined separately will be allowed to meet for a meal — sometimes at the same table.

Diners at different tables will have to be six feet apart, the recommended distance by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cut the spread of the virus by up to 99 percent.

But under the new Miami-Dade guidelines, up to four diners who have been isolated separately may dine at the same table together, for the first time, while maintaining three feet between each other, the distance recommended by the World Health Organization that cuts risk by 95 percent.

Diners from the same household can sit up to six at a table and don’t have to observe the three-feet rule. Plus many tables are only 26-32 inches wide.

This, on the heels of a new study published Wednesday by the National Academy of Science suggests that speaking normally in closed environments, like restaurants, can contribute “substantially” to spreading the virus.

“It’s going to be up to each one of us to protect the health of other people,” Trepka said.

Less important than 25 or 50 percent capacity, she said, is the requirement that diners and employees keep appropriate distances.

Physical distancing and wearing masks — even homemade cloth masks — will be vitally important, particularly in a restaurant setting, Marty said.

That, she admits, is a challenge for workers in restaurant kitchens, who must work in close quarters. Plus, unlike a diner who might spend an hour exposed in a restaurant, workers throughout the restaurant will spend long shifts exposed to more people for longer stretches.

“The risk is automatically higher (for workers),” Marty said.

Workers who feel ill should not be penalized for calling in sick, Trepka said, and should be paid to stay at home.

“If they don’t protect their employees, they could infect their own customers,” she said.

Restaurants are trying to be creative within the rules. Pubbelly Sushi will debut “dining pods” with partitions for its Aventura restaurant.

What keeps Marty up, she said, are so called superspreaders — people who have a natural disposition for spreading the virus, usually without knowing it. It could be a diner — or an employee. In one case, a single person at choir practice in Washington state unknowingly spread the disease to 52 others.

Marty suggested two approaches for tracking potential superspreaders in Miami-Dade restaurants — restaurants going over a checklist of requirements every day and debriefing at the end of the day to know who may have come in contact with an infected person.

Neither of those requirements made the final guidelines.

“The sooner you know of a problem, the quicker you can contain it. And the only way to do that is by being constantly aware of it,” she said. “We have to be able to identify, isolate and treat these folks, and the only way to do that is through contact tracing.”

The safest way to dine out? Sit outside, both doctors agreed. The science says being in an enclosed space with someone who might be carrying the virus is much riskier.

“The first restaurant I go to, I’ll be sitting in their outdoor space,” Marty said.

“It’s much safer,” Trepka said.

Miami-Dade’s restaurant guidelines go on for 10 pages. They address upgrading air-conditioning filtration, having hand sanitizing stations at the door, recommending separate staff for running and clearing dishes and plexiglass barriers at checkouts. Staff must wash hands every 30 minutes, even after changing gloves.

The rules are extensive.

“I will go to a restaurant that I know is following the rules we put in place,” Marty said.

That said, Phase 1 of reopening still advises people in at-risk categories — diners older than 65 or those whose immune systems might be weakened — to stay at home.

Marty has an 82-year-old mother she said she will continue to keep isolated. And Trepka’s 80-year-old mother won’t be going out to a restaurant anytime soon.

“Would I want her to go to a restaurant?” Trepka wondered. “No. I just don’t think it’s worth it.

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