SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News) – While much of the State of Utah has reopened, the State Liquor Store at 205 West and 400 South in Salt Lake City was closed Monday.
“There’s lights on but nobody’s in there,” frequent customer Kenneth McConnell said. “It don’t look like it’s gonna open.”
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Probably not for a while because the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control reported one of the employees here tested positive for COVID-19. Now the store has to be thoroughly disinfected as does the other store that employee worked, the one located at 1255 West North Temple, where would be customers also left empty-handed Monday.
The DABC previously closed stores in Moab and Murray for one week because of the same reason.
After just two weeks in the Moderate or “Orange” Phase, all of the state except for Salt Lake City and the small southeastern Utah towns of Bluff and Mexican Hat have moved into the Yellow Phase, despite some objections.
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On May 14th, District 24 Representative Jen Dailey-Provost tweeted “Speaking w/my public health voice, I feel that this is a mistake. A spike and resurgence will ultimately cause more economic harm than a more measured roll out of the grand economic reopening. To say I’m frightened is an understatement. I hope I’m wrong.”
In the past month, Utah’s cases have more than doubled from 4,974 to 9,999 and deaths have more than doubled from 53 to 113. The trend appears to continue upward with the Department of Health reporting an average of 143 cases per day and a positive rate of 5.2% for the week ending May 25th then an average of 197 per day and 7.1% last week.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn released a statement late this afternoon, reading in part “From a public health perspective the behaviors we saw at protests over the weekend were alarming.
As our increasing case counts have indicated, we are nowhere near being out-of-the-woods when it comes to the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.”
