NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Sarah Palin returned to an Upper East Side Italian restaurant to dine outdoors Wednesday evening, two days after testing positive for COVID-19.
Palin, 57, was back at celebrity hotspot Elio's, where she was also spotted dining indoors on Saturday night before she tested positive Monday.
The former Alaskan governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee is in the city for her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. The judge presiding over the case announced in court Monday morning that the unvaccinated Palin had tested positive just as the trial was about to begin.
Elio's manager Luca Guaitolini confirmed to CNN that Palin was seated in a heated outdoor enclosure Wednesday evening, when temps were below freezing.
“Tonight Sarah Palin returned to the restaurant to apologize for the fracas around her previous visit,” Guaitolini said. “In accordance with the vaccine mandate and to protect our staff, we seated her outdoors ... We are a restaurant open to the public, and we treat civilians the same.”
Meanwhile, a restaurant worker told the New York Post, “S*** happens! People come to eat, we are not the border police.”
Palin’s Saturday outing appeared to violate the city's COVID-19 guidelines, which require that patrons show proof of vaccination before dining indoors. Palin is unvaccinated and said just last month that she’d get a vaccine “over my dead body.”
Asked earlier this week about Palin’s Saturday visit, Guaitolini told the New York Times “we just made a mistake,” adding that the restaurant checked vaccination cards for first-time customers but not regulars. He said Palin was with a longtime guest.
Palin's Wednesday visit would run afoul of CDC guidelines that urge people positive for COVID-19 to isolate for five days and then only emerge if they’re asymptomatic and masked.
A City Hall spokesperson told CNN that it was “highly irresponsible” for Palin to dine out on Wednesday.
“Our goal has always been to incentivize isolation for those testing positive for COVID and providing them multiple resources,” the spokesperson said. “That being said we hope that anybody who has COVID is isolating for their own safety and the safety of all New Yorkers and find it highly irresponsible that Sarah Palin refuses to do so.”
This is the second time that Palin has tested positive for COVID-19. She also caught the coronavirus in March 2021.
The judge in Palin’s defamation suit said the trial can resume on Feb. 3 if Palin has adequately recovered by then. Courthouse rules would permit her to return to court on that date—even if she still tests positive—as long as she has no symptoms.
Palin brought the lawsuit against the Times in 2017. Her case survived an initial dismissal that was reversed on appeal in 2019, setting the stage for a rare instance that a major news organization will have to defend itself before a jury in a libel case involving a major public figure.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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