HOUSTON – This weekend is Labor Day and city leaders, along with health experts, worry that folks will travel this weekend and there will be another surge of COVID-19 cases.
Health experts said the holiday weekend is a crucial moment to get and keep coronavirus under control.
According to UC Davis Health, the nationwide summer surge began with careless Memorial Day gatherings, and what happens this weekend could determine the path COVID-19 takes for months and how states can proceed with reopening the rest of the year.
“Right now, this epidemic is driven by behavior,” said Brad Pollock, chair of the UC Davis Health Department of Public Health Sciences. “It’s not a lack of tests or therapeutics. It’s behavior. We can slow COVID-19 if we all work together.”
UC Davis Health urges people that are celebrating the holiday weekend to keep gatherings outside and keep it small.
“Being outside helps because the airflow dilutes the virus,” said Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital. “That’s why it’s so important to social distance. It will provide a great deal of protection outside.”
Here are a few tips from UC Davis Health for the weekend:
- Mark off 6-foot distances for tables or zones for each household to put their chairs, if they’re bringing their own.
- Set up tables for each household with clean plates and utensils.
- Set a few “visitors chairs” 6 feet from each table so people can mingle.
- Don’t have a communal appetizer or condiment stations.
- Give every table small bags of chips or nuts or some other party munchies. And give each table their own dips, salsas or condiments.
- Put masks on each table as party favors, and in case someone did not bring one.