Some Los Angeles restaurants temporarily close amid COVID-19 spike
As Los Angeles County grapples with another surge in coronavirus cases
By JORY RAND
Click here for updates on this story
LOS ANGELES, California (KABC) — As Los Angeles County grapples with another surge in coronavirus cases, some restaurants are temporarily closing their doors to protect staff and patrons.
The Village Idiot in the Fairfax District reopened Thursday after being closed for the last few days due to a fully vaccinated staff member testing positive for COVID-19.
“We apologize for the inconvenience, but unfortunately we’ve had a breakthrough case of Covid-19 with one of our fully vaccinated staff members. We will be closed for the next few days until all of our employees are tested,” the restaurant said in an Instagram post Monday.
Bottega Louie in West Hollywood also closed its doors.
“Out of an abundance of caution for the health and safety of our guests and staff, we have decided to close Bottega Louie West Hollywood for a few days, due to increasing Covid-19 cases,” the restaurant said in an Instagram post.
L.A. County is seeing its highest daily COVID-19 case count since mid-February. The county health department reported 2,767 new cases on Thursday. That’s up 80% in just one week – and 20 times as high as the figure from a month earlier.
If the state was still using the color-coded tier system, L.A. County would have fallen back into the most-restrictive purple tier, resulting in the closures of some businesses and the sharp limiting of capacity at others.
That’s why doctors across the region are continuing to urge people to get vaccinated if they haven’t already.
L.A. County recently reinstated a face-covering mandate that requires everyone to wear masks in indoor public spaces regardless of their vaccination status.
Some L.A. bars are also demanding vaccination proof for entry.
Health officials have attributed the recent spike to the presence of the more infectious Delta variant and the intermingling of unmasked individuals where vaccination status is unknown.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
