Nevada Business and Industry director says businesses 89.4% COVID compliant

With some 10,000 business inspections under their belt, the head of Nevada’s Business and Industry department says Nevada businesses are 89.4 percent compliant with pandemic health/safety rules.

Terry Reynolds said the state OSHA teams are working with county and city officials to enforce the rules including mask wearing both in and out doors when in public.

He urged all businesses to update their capacity limit posters at business entrances in the wake of Gov. Steve Sisolak’s decision Sunday to impose stricter guidelines, cutting many businesses from 50 percent of allowed capacity to 25 percent. Those new limits take effect Tuesday.

Sisolak said those restrictions would remain in place for three weeks to see if Nevada can flatten the curve of infections. He urged people not to have large Thanksgiving parties this year.

According to OSHA’s data, restaurants are following the rules 93.9 percent of the time. The rate for bars statewide is lower at 74.9 percent. But compliance for bars is actually a bit higher than for government offices and agencies that come in at 73.3 percent statewide.

Grocery stores were at 86.2 percent and gaming venues at 93.1 percent.

The full list of different businesses is on the OSHA website at dir.nv.gov/osha

Coronavirus task force director Caleb Cage said some counties are now beginning to impose restrictions and rules that are a bit tougher than the state’s limits. Clark County and Carson City have both created systems of metrics to decide whether to allow events and Washoe County has now cut public gatherings from 250 people to 50. Washoe health officials are also urging people planning private parties to limit them to just 10 people from a maximum of two households.

Asked at what point the task force will be able to see whether the governor’s Stay Home 2.0 model worked, deputy Health Division Administrator Julia Peek said they should be able to see what impact it had by midweek next week.

But she also pointed out that with Thanksgiving just days away the state could see increases as it has after every other holiday this year. The incubation period for COVID-19 is about two weeks.

Asked whether contact tracing had flagged any specific businesses as hot spots, Peek said contact tracing isn’t specific to a certain business because the individual who tests positive may have visited 10 places in the days before that test.

“Exposure data is not a silver bullet,” she said.

Cage said the state has logged 2,339 new virus cases in the past 24 hours and there are now 1,274 people hospitalized. The positivity rate is 16.7 percent, more than double the 8 percent limit. The only counties in the state not flagged for increased risk of transmission are Mineral, Pershing, Storey and White Pine.