ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — St. Louis County continued to work on a plan to potentially reopen indoor dining as representatives from the health department met with its "informal restaurant working group" Tuesday, according to a press release from the department.
"The meeting was productive and served as a good starting point to complete a plan to reopen some form of indoor dining in restaurants and other food establishments," a department spokesperson said in the release.
Though the plan has not been finalized, the parties discussed several new ideas for safety protocol. The plan will go to St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, "who said if the number of new COVID-19 cases remains steady, he will release it next week," the release said.
Indoor dining has been prohibited since Nov. 17 under the county's Safer at Home order. The county extended the order last week, stretching past Christmas.
Earlier this month, the Missouri Court of Appeals sided with the county in a lawsuit filed by restaurants that challenged the ban. The owners of about 40 restaurants said Page showed no proof that COVID-19 was spreading at restaurants and that he lacked the authority to declare indoor dining illegal.
Monday, the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported COVID-19 reported a "downward trend" in hospital admissions and hospitalizations. The head of the task force, Dr. Alex Garza, cautioned the numbers are still too high.
"We don't want a post-Christmas surge," Garza said during a briefing Monday. "Please give these exhausted health care workers ... the greatest gift you could give them and stay home and prevent the spread."
