From 23:01 on Saturday 23 January, COVID restrictions will be reduced. Bars and restaurants will move from 25% to 50% capacity, and museums and theaters will be re-admitted.
The safety restrictions issued by the Shelby County Health Department on Dec. 26, including allowing citizens to restrict activities outside their homes to just work and essential activities, will be lifted.
Businesses that closed under the Safer at Home order included the Memphis Zoo and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
The zoo said it would reopen Saturday.
In terms of health guideline no. 17 no businesses are specifically closed, but all must comply with safety restrictions, including masking, social distance and capacity requirements.
Since businesses will be open, the guideline is based on the increased responsibility of each person, including not attending large events and restricting events in your home.
Under the directive, schools are strongly encouraged to discontinue contact sports.
While bars and restaurants will be able to increase capacity, another six-foot distance between tables is still needed. Visitors must limit themselves to six people per table. The businesses must still stop serving at 22:00
Smoking is still prohibited in indoor venues, but according to the new rules, institutions may dance outside, provided the dancers are six meters apart and from the same household.
The stricter rules set the day after Christmas, when the weekly positivity rate was well over 12%. In the ensuing upsurge, daily cases hit nearly 1,000 times three times between late December and January 10, a pandemic record so far in Shelby County.
Last week, the numbers started to flatten and fall.
Restaurants welcomed the news that they have greater indoor capacity to seat customers, but some restaurants that closed their doors below the 25% limit were not sure how long it would take to reopen.
On Wednesday, Jan. 20, the Department of Health announced 237 new cases and no new deaths, a level not seen in Shelby County since mid-October. These improvements, plus the rate at which vaccines are being administered, have led the Department of Health to weaken the restrictions.
The department said somewhere on Thursday, January 21, that it would announce the place where it would administer second doses to people who received their first vaccine shots in the last week of December or early January.
Hundreds of members of the public were vaccinated the week of December 27 without appointments on days designated by the Department of Health for first responders. It later closed the line and began requiring badge numbers for first responders or proof of age for 75 and older.
On January 8, the first-link sign-up link announced appointments that would begin next week. In less than 24 hours, appointments were booked until the end of January, which makes little use for people who want to talk on their second shot but to wait.
Many of those waiting are elderly.
“The lack of information has caused a great deal of anxiety in a section of the population who are already concerned enough,” said Karen McCarthy, a Shelby County resident, adding, “getting old is bad enough.”
The health department said this week that it plans to give second doses, starting in late January, to about 9,500 people. It also said that the position on when and where was because the negotiations on the site contract were still worked out.