PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Photos of a crowded food court at the Christiana Mall in Delaware, that's been getting a lot of attention on social media, have health officials “concerned.”
The photos posted on the Delaware Restaurant Association’s Facebook page show every table in the food court full of people on Black Friday, with even more people in the food court standing around restaurants.
Indoor dining in Delaware is limited to 30% capacity, and the state’s Department of Health and Social Services said food courts fall under those regulations.
But after seeing these photos and others like them, the DHSS and the Division of Public Health believe that’s too many people in one place, even if it meets the limit. They now say there can’t be more than 100 people at once inside any mall food court in the state, regardless of the food court’s size.
The Delaware Restaurant Association’s post, which on Monday had around 2,000 shares and 800 comments, said Delawareans were asked to avoid gatherings, and based on the photos, it doesn’t look like they were doing that at the mall.
Later in the post, the DRA said it’s “time to stop blaming restaurants for spread” and “it’s time to make things equitable across industries.”
“We’re all empty, we’re sanitizing, we did all this work, barricades, plexiglass, the staff is trained,” Delaware restaurant owner and DRA member Gianmarco Martuscelli told NBC 10, “but then you can go into a food court and see all those people sitting down, people waiting to be seated and nobody sanitizing those tables.”
He said the new limit at food courts wasn’t the goal of posting those pictures on Facebook.
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“I didn’t want the restrictions to go against the mall,” he said. “I was hoping that they would go the other way and actually help the restaurants and say, maybe in a week or two, they go back and say let’s go back to 50 (percent capacity), let’s allow these businesses to survive these holidays.”
The DHSS said it’s possible that despite all those people appearing in the photo, the Christiana Mall was still within the 30% capacity limit.
KYW Newsradio reached out to the mall via email Monday morning for comment and hasn’t yet heard back.