PORTLAND, Oregon — Just days before the traditionally busy Mother's Day weekend, restaurants in 15 counties learned they can reopen for some indoor dining in Oregon.
“Having statewide indoor dining available again for Oregonians this Friday is a breath of fresh air,” said Jason Brandt, president and CEO of the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association.
It is a sudden change from just a week ago when Gov. Kate Brown announced the counties would go into “extreme risk” restrictions. But the move is also part of the rules the governor set up in early April.
She set up new statewide metrics that had to be met for any county to qualify for extreme risk restrictions even if the county already met the local metrics for extreme risk.
The new statewide rules required at least 300 people be hospitalized with COVID-19 and that hospitalizations were going up at least 15% on a rolling seven-day count.
In late April, the statewide metrics were hit, which sent 15 counties already above the local limits into the extreme risk category. It shut down indoor dining and limited other indoor businesses.
But on May 4, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients fell to 345, just enough to bring the seven-day rolling percentage change to 14.9%.
Gov. Brown announced later on that same day that the statewide metric was no longer met and as of Friday, the counties would be released from the extreme category down to the high risk category, which allows restaurants to open indoor dining to 25% capacity.
Brandt said it may be helpful, although maybe not.
“Either just enough to justify opening up, especially over a busy weekend, or maybe not quite enough,” Brandt said.
He explained that it depends on how big the restaurant is inside and how much outside seating it has as well.
The extreme risk rules also had shut down many gyms. They can now reopen with up to 50 people.
Dan Afrasiabi owns several Planet Fitness gyms. He's excited about the move from extreme risk but also noted the challenges of limited capacity.
“Obviously we’re happy to see that but I think it’s really important to remember there’s still a tremendous amount of restrictions in place for fitness facilities and other businesses,” he said.
Afrasiabi said some of the remaining limits are ridiculous.
“There’s a cap of 50 people on the number of people in the gym no matter what size the gym is. If the gym is 50,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet, there is still a 50-person cap on restrictions in place," he said. "I don’t know how that policy makes sense."