With Minnesota rolling up more cases and hospitalizations over the last few weeks, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has decided to impose further restrictions on restaurants, bars and social gatherings in an attempt to keep the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.
Walz made the announcement during a statewide address on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning he acknowledged that the hospitality industry has been feeling the brunt of the state's restrictions.
"I just want to note that none of these decisions are good decisions and they're certainly not pleasant," Walz told Dave Lee Wednesday. "And when it comes to the hospitality industry, they have been hit hard and again, it is not fair. This virus doesn't really care about fairness, doesn't care about who we are."
Walz also said the state and federal governments need to do more to support those businesses that are affected.
"The fact of the matter is the hospitality industry, because the nature of their business and the close contact of social interactions has been disproportionately hit, and that has had an immense impact on that workforce," said the governor.
"And a lot of cases, predominantly women, have been affected by that. People of color and those business owners who have sunk their life into this and because of the way this virus spreads, we put these mitigations in."
Walz has already promised he'll put $10 million extra dollars into the Small Business Relief Fund in Minnesota which will help, but isn't enough according to Walz.
"This is where the federal government, some of the relief efforts to PPE loans, and those were fine," Walz told WCCO. "A lot of it ended up with really large industries, and there was not targeted relief specifically for the hospitality industry. And I'll continue to advocate for that because we're asking these people to put these restrictions in to protect all of us. They should not absorb totally the financial hit from it alone. And that's why hopefully these grants, the state is able to give some immediate relief to our roughly 21,000 bars and restaurants and get some help to them. More needs to be done."
Korey Bannerman owns several restaurants including Willie McCoys and a few others across the Twin Cities. He told Dave Lee it feels like restaurants are being picked on.
"It's kind of another kick to the restaurants industry who've been kind of kicked down for quite some time since the start of the pandemic," Bannerman said. "It hurts. We've got some questions on why they're picking on the restaurant industry. We're really doing everything we can to just stop the spread and controlling our environment quite a bit. And we can control it better than other industries out there."
Walz also told Dave Lee that he doesn't expect any further school restrictions at this time. Walz said the data so far points to less spreading of COVID in schools, and the flexibility school districts have to adjust learning situations on the fly was built into this. So far, that appears to be working.
