SANTA FE – Starting Saturday, New Mexico’s restaurants can accommodate more customers, adding limited indoor service, and places of worship can allow them to gather more faithfully.
According to an amended public aptitude ordinance that takes effect on August 29, New Mexico is also doubling its limit for social gatherings to 10, while the requirement that New Mexicons wear masks in public remains in effect.
The latest public aptitude ordinances alleviate some of the state’s restrictions to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus network, which causes COVID-19 disease. A partial reopening last June was followed by a sharp increase in the spread of the disease in the summer, which led the state to retreat in July.
The limit for internal church congregations increases on Saturday from 25% to 40% of the building’s chimney prevention code occupancy limit, with provisions that allow participants at a distance of six feet from others.
Additional needs for places of worship under State Department of Health rules come with avoiding sharing hymns and other objects, collecting tithing and offerings online or in collection boxes, and avoiding a song or doing a song to restrict respiratory droplets that spread the disease.
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Restaurants, cafes and cafes, as well as breweries, wineries and distillers will now be able to sit visitors inside at 25% of the chimney code occupancy limit, and the seat limit increases to 75% occupancy, with tables spaced at six feet and no more than six consumers at a table.
State parks remain open to citizens of New Mexico and are limited to the use of hours of sunlight.
Museums whose static exhibits can reopen 25% of their legal occupation, but not amenities with “interactive and/or immersive” exhibits, meaning that the escape rooms, Meow Wolf and similar institutions remain closed.
Accommodation services are still limited to 50% of their capacity, fitness service providers, or Americans in quarantine or extended stays.
The amended order expires after September 18, possibly adjustments would be made sooner.
The easing of restrictions on restaurants and other restaurants came days after a hard work report showed that New Mexico reached 12. 7% official unemployment in July, up from 8. 4% last month and above the national average of 10. 2%.
READ MORE: Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham highlights new regulations for restaurants and churches
The new limits of occupation of places to eat have been criticized as arbitrary through the state Republican Party, which he said in a statement: “There is no” science “in that number. “
Republican President Steve Pearce said the Democratic governor had “pushed the barriers to what is legal and constitutional in this economic crisis,” though on Wednesday the state’s Supreme Court unanimously made a decision to justify the administration’s strength to limit indoor food in the occasion of a fitness emergency.
As Judge Judith Nakamura announced the court decision, she said: “It is well established that dissenting reviews make actions arbitrary and capricious. “
Relief from restrictions on public meetings follows recent downward trends in the spread of the disease and the state meets its criteria for final schools, based on propagation rate, hospital formula resources and epidemic preparedness, speed of contact search, and test rate.
At a news convention Thursday, Human Services Secretary of State David Scrase presented a new state map that measures the average number of cases reported across counties and verifies positivity rates.
Most New Mexico counties rated it “green,” meaning that between August 17 and 23 they reported fewer than 8 cases consistent with 100,000 inhabitants and had a check positivity rate of less than 5%.
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The green score means that scheduled visits to long-term care services in those counties can begin and that public schools with reintegration plans approved through the state Department of Public Education can be resumed in person for K-5 students after Labor Day.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said reopening would begin with younger students, as they are the greatest desire in person at the beginning of their education.
These reopenings would involve a “hybrid model” in which academics participate in distance or classroom instruction in turn to restrict meetings.
Last August, however, at the press conference, Education Secretary Ryan Stewart said serious gaps in broadband connectivity and/or electronic devices presented serious and demanding situations in the use of virtual platforms to the state.
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School districts in six “red” counties – Chaves, Eddy, Hidalgo, Lea, Quay, and Roosevelt – are not eligible for reopening. These counties, five of which are in east New Mexico, near Texas, had an average of 8 or more instances consistent with 100,000 and had a check positivity rate of 5% or more.
Noting that 24 public school districts and autonomous schools in New Mexico had voted to resume in-person schooling before the winter break, the governor said Thursday that no district would be forced to reopen.
You can contact Algernon D’Ammassa at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news. com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.