Philly Expanding Indoor Dining To 50 Percent Capacity Friday

PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia's health commissioner Tuesday delivered some good news for restaurants and diners.

Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said restaurants in the city can expand indoor dining capacity on Friday.

On Sept. 9, the city allowed indoor dining to resume with restrictions, such as 25 percent capacity limit.

But starting Friday, restaurants can allow 50 percent of their capacity inside, Farley said.

The new capacity limits are in line with current Pennsylvania restrictions.

And per the Governor’s rules, restaurants choosing to expand capacity must self-certify following state and CDC guidelines in addition to the city's rules.

Indoor dining has restrictions that are similar to, and even exceed, indoor dining restrictions set by the state.

Restrictions for indoor dining include:

• diners must wear masks when they are not seated at a table;
• a 25 percent capacity limit;
• only four diners per table;
• six feet of space between tables;
• no bar service, alcohol only available as part of the same transaction as a meal;
• indoor dining orders will have an 11 p.m. last call;
• establishments will be required to be closed for service by midnight;
• physical barriers, such as sneeze guards or partitions, will be installed in restaurant kitchens and at cash registers, host stands, and food pick up areas where 6-feet of social distancing is difficult;
• employees will be screened for symptoms before every shift and prevented from remaining on-site if they have coronavirus symptoms;
• employees must wear both masks and face shields.

Any establishment that does not follow these restrictions will be shut down.

"The falling case counts we’re seeing show the success of our strategy," Farley said. "I said that we would scale back our restrictions slowly and carefully if case counts continued to fall, and we’re doing that now. If folks continue to follow our guidance, I believe that we will be able to relax more restrictions."

Farley has said there is no exact figure on coronavirus data that would cause the city to suspend indoor activities. However, he said should case counts or the percent of positive tests rise sharply and evidence indicated the rise is tied to dining inside, the city would consider suspending indoor dining.

Fifty-nine new cases of the coronavirus were reported Tuesday. However, the Department of Public Health also added 376 previously unidentified cases to the city’s database.

The total case count since the start of the pandemic is now 36,887. The previously unidentified cases were added as a result of data matching from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Pennsylvania Department of Health and come from tests conducted in March through August.

One more death was reported in Philadelphia. This brings the number of residents who have succumbed to the virus in Philadelphia to 1,801. Of the 1,801 total deaths, 889 — or 49 percent — were long-term care facility residents.