translated from Spanish: Authorities fine-tune protocols to be applied in restaurants and cafes

The Intendent of the Metropolitan Region, Felipe Guevara, met with the RM Health seremi, Paula Labra, and with the president of the Chilean Gastronomy Association (ACHIGA), Máximo Picallo, in order to learn about the protocols and health measures that restaurants will apply in the five communes of the RM that will advance tomorrow Wednesday to Phase 3 of Preparation of the Plan Paso a Paso , and that allows cafes and restaurants to operate in open spaces, with 25% of its capacity and a minimum distance of 2 meters between tables. At the end of the meeting, Intendente Guevara commented that “among the characteristics of the Preparation phase is that the restaurants and coffees can begin incipiently to function. In the region there are approximately 200 thousand people who depend on this source of work – not only in the kitchen, cleaning or boxes – a whole world that revolves around this service, and we are happy to start counting not only people infected with coronaviruses but also to count jobs that we are recovering.” The regional authority added that this opening is not only the responsibility of the locals or the health service, but also of the customers. “It is up to them and self-care that we can move forward in this Step by Step. It is not enough for the restoranes to make the effort to take action in the public space, to take care of hygiene; it is not enough for the Seremi de Salud to order and monitor. It’s very important that customers help us,” he said. Among these self-care measures, Guevara listed respect for the subway away from customers, and hopefully not smoking in the premises so as not to disturb those who do not have that habit. But also when ordering food: “We recommend not sharing food. You can’t peck, as we say in good Chilean. If between two or three people order a pizza to share, just tell the club and you’re going to bring the pieces on three plates. What you can’t do is have the pizza in the middle and have everyone touch it. Responsibility and self-care. Thanks to the sacrifice and effort of the neighbors of these communes, greater degrees of freedom are being gained, and to maintain that freedom we need greater responsibility,” he said. At his turn, the seremi Paula Labra stated that “the main thing in the places that will open tomorrow, and that you can not jump, is that coffees and restaurants can only work in open places, with a maximum of 25% of its capacity and with 2 meters of linear distance between each table. Other suggestions are that they remove shared dishes from the letters, and that the cards are not physical (having the menus on social networks, on the individual ones or perhaps on a whiteboard) to avoid contact between people.” Finally, ACHIGA President Maxima Picallo said that “we always stated that waiting until stage 4 was very long. The situation in the food sector is very critical, and this opens up a hope that we can keep our economy running and be able to bring our suspended workers to their workplaces. It is a tremendous opportunity for these communes to demonstrate that the gastronomic sector is a regulated sector that meets the standards and hopefully as soon as the other communes can move to phase 3”.

Original source in Spanish