PROVIDENCE – Gov. Gina M. Raimondo on Sunday said the number of positive coronavirus cases in the state remains at 20, a “welcome pause” in the local spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic she warned will not last.
“There are going to be more [positive] cases” in Rhode Island, she said, noting the state is doing more than 100 tests a day and has 2,300 people in self-quarantine.
She continues to ask Rhode Islanders to stay home, including staying away from malls and restaurants that remain open.
“We are in conversations … with malls, restaurants and food delivery,” she said. “I am telling everyone … avoid them all.”
She did ask all Rhode Island child care centers to close for the next week, after previously asking them to stay open.
“The next two weeks is the critical time for us to pull together” to help prevent a local outbreak, she said. “Stay in the house … or go for a walk. Stay away from other people and large crowds.”
James Mark, owner of north and big king restaurants in Providence, preemptively decided to close his restaurants on Sunday.
In a lengthy explanation posted on his website, Mark explained that he was worried the restaurants were continuing to attract large numbers of patrons, and he had a growing sense that many were not taking the health experts’ advice to keep apart.
After Providence’s state of emergency declaration, “Business dipped a little bit. But it didn’t dip significantly. It was still busy,” he told Providence Business News.
After Brown University disclosed Saturday that the university had a confirmed case, he noticed he had several tables of Brown students at the Big King restaurant. The space is small and hard to separate parties.
“We had probably a dozen Brown students at Big King last night,” he said. “There is no distancing happening, and people aren’t taking this seriously.”
As he crunched the numbers for his business, trying to find alternate ways of staying open, he learned one of his staff members is caring for an elderly grandparent. Another confided to him in recent days she was immunocompromised, he said.
As he explained on his post on the website: “We have guests that I’m certain are in the same boat. And if I was complicit in the serious illness or death of a staff member, guest, or their family? I wouldn’t be able to handle that guilt.”
(UPDATES with Mark comments.)
Staff writer Mary MacDonald contributed to this report.
