City Issues Directive Addressing Safety in Essential Businesses

In the interest of public safety, economic stability and long-term recovery, The City of Key West on Sunday issued State of Local Emergency 2020-05, which implements additional protective measures for essential businesses and separation requirements for individuals diagnosed or reasonably believed to be infected with COVID-19:

Beginning midnight, April 7, 2020, all essential businesses shall:

  • Limit capacity on monitor entrances and exits to reduce their maximum occupancy load by 50 percent. Businesses that have multiple entrances and exits shall establish a protocol of entrance and exit points only.
  • Provide alcohol-based hand sanitizers for use by customers and employees, subject to the availability of supplies.
  • Provide disinfecting wipes at points of entrance, cash registers, and other appropriate locations. As an alternative, essential businesses shall designate staff responsible for disinfecting cars, shopping baskets, point of sales terminals and other areas as frequently as possible.
  • Implement procedures to ensure that both employees and customers remain at least six feet apart at all times. This can be accomplished with marking floors and other visible systems.
  • Close all salad bars and other self-serve food station.
  • Refrain from distributing free samples of conducting tasting.

Also included in the directive are requirements for the covering of the nose and mouth:

  • All employees and customers of any essential business where ten or more people congregate shall be required to wear a form of covering over their nose and mouth at all times while inside the business. Examples of such businesses include grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, food distribution points and hardware stores. These coverings may include face masks a homemade mask or other cloth covering such as a scarf or bandana. In addition, employers are strongly urged to implement policies for employees to use other protective equipment like gloves.
  • The requirements of the directive shall not apply to any outdoor activity, except for persons providing delivery services.

In addition, the directive orders any person who has been diagnosed, or is reasonably believed to have been infected with COVID-19 shall separate themselves from all individuals who are not infected to present the possible spread of the disease.

“Ideally, we are already doing the right thing with social distancing,” said City Manager Greg Veliz. “This is one more step to ensure that we slow or stop the spread of this disease so we can quickly get on the road to recovery.”

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