On December 8th on Fox News, during a transition between her show and Sean Hannity, TV host Laura Ingraham wrongly claimed restrictions on eating out are not supported by science. The comment came after Hannity made reference to Ingraham’s on-air interview the previous day with a Los Angeles restaurant owner. The claim is inaccurate. There is evidence that restaurants and bars are among the most common places for the virus spread.
The risks associated with dining out vary based on the safety precautions the restaurants take and the coronavirus situation in their geographic areas. Many restaurants have become safer over time, but case surges in many states make running into an infected person more likely.
“It’s hard to make universal claims because the pandemic is different in different parts of the country and even in different parts of the state,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “In some parts of the country, restaurants aren’t driving cases. In others, they have been identified in case investigations.”
City data in Washington, D.C., for example, has shown restaurants and bars to be among the most common places for virus spread. Data in and around Los Angeles has been less clear.
Still, there’s plenty of evidence that COVID-19 has and can spread at restaurants — and especially at those that let groups of people congregate indoors without masks.
“Modeling studies have indicated that restaurants are high-risk environments for COVID-19 transmission,” said Jason McDonald, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “In places like restaurants, people remove their masks to consume food and beverages, which increases the risk of transmission.”
One CDC report in September, based on a survey of 314 symptomatic people who got tested for the coronavirus in July, found a link between testing positive for the coronavirus and going to locations with on-site eating and drinking options, such as restaurants.
