EDWARDSVILLE — Businesses here, worried about legal issues and their patrons’ well-being, did not uniformly jump to drop coronavirus health precautions on Wednesday, despite county officials’ move this week to lift shutdowns and allow businesses to reopen.
“We just can’t do it yet,” said Kimberli Goodner, a former nurse who owns 222 Artisan Bakery in Edwardsville, which has cut to curbside pickup, five days a week. “I’d feel awful… if I knew something we did caused harm to our employees or customers.”
Officials across the country are now weighing how quickly, or slowly, to lift shutdowns and allow businesses to reopen. As St. Louis and St. Louis County opt for a slower, more cautious pace, leaders in Madison and St. Clair counties have edged toward rolling back closures earlier than some state and regional counterparts.
The Madison County Board of Health approved on Tuesday guidelines that allowed some business to reopen on Wednesday, bucking Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order.
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Kurt Prenzler, the chairman of the Madison County Board, cited concerns about spikes in unemployment claims. Madison County saw nearly 6,900 unemployment claims in March, and nearly 8,100 in April — up from 915 in January, and 729 in February — according to county data.
He added that the health board has the power to shut businesses down if they operate unsafely.
“And I wouldn’t say we’re advising them to open — that’s their choice,” Prenzler said.
Daniel Henning, a manager at Cleveland Heath restaurant in Edwardsville, which has been offering curbside pickup during the pandemic, said the resolution “does not change anything for us.”
The local chamber of commerce has advised its members to consult legal counsel and insurance providers about reopening.
“The county’s resolution cannot supersede the governor’s order,” said Desiree Bennyhoff, president and CEO of the Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce.
Bennyhoff said she is especially concerned that businesses with state-issued professional licenses, like barbers, could put those licenses at risk if they reopen.
The chamber told members in an email Tuesday night: “If you have a state-issued license, know that you are operating in defiance of the governor’s executive order, the consequences of which remain unknown.”
Rob Gatter, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law, also said that the state order supersedes the county’s resolution. He said he was concerned about the possible confusion that could be caused by an individual county passing a resolution to reopen businesses.
“There’s a lot of things to try to factor in, and it requires a great deal of digging into questions about the law, about insurance coverage, about federal aid, about the structure of state and county government — that the average businessperson isn’t going to know off the top of their head,” Gatter said. “It seems irresponsible to place that burden, during a crisis, on individual households and individual businesses.”
Legal experts also said that reopening could put businesses at risk of being sued: Shoppers could claim that they had been infected with COVID-19 at a particular business — though it would be difficult to prove.
Kimberly Norwood, a professor of law at Washington University, said it will be increasingly important for businesses to demonstrate that they have taken precautions to prevent transmission of the virus.
“People will file lawsuits all day long. You can’t stop that. But you can do everything you can to protect yourself,” Norwood said. For example, businesses can limit the number of people inside at one time.
If a business owner is found liable, or decides to settle a case, they would likely turn to their liability insurance. Gatter said business owners should ask their insurers if liability insurance would be void, because they had opened in defiance of a state public health order.
St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern said in an interview Wednesday that his county is “abiding by the executive order of the governor,” but has sent a letter to Pritzker’s office about the southwestern region entering the third phase of Pritzker’s reopening plan by Friday, about two weeks early.
Phase three of Pritzker’s five-phase plan allows some businesses to reopen but limits social gatherings to fewer than 10.
“While we are talking about wanting to move up the timeline, we’re certainly not opening the doors,” he said. “We’re relying on reasonable steps.”
Kern called Madison County Board of Health’s decision to reopen a “political maneuver” and “not a plan.”
“Ours is based upon science,” Kern said. “This is not a politically-based plan. This is based upon using the medical metrics in the Restore Illinois plan to justify opening up earlier because of our numbers.”
With almost two consecutive weeks of declining hospitalizations for suspected COVID-19 cases in the Metro East, Kern said St. Clair County would like to open earlier but stressed that such a decision should be a regional one.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported on Wednesday 1,677 new positive cases of COVID-19 statewide, for a total of 84,698, and the state’s largest one-day increase of deaths so far in the pandemic, at 192. At least 3,792 people across Illinois have died.
Madison County reported 10 new cases and two new deaths, for a total of 456 cases and 35 deaths.
St. Clair County reported 17 new cases and one new death, for a total of 788 cases and 64 deaths, more than half in long-term care facilities.
The head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said Wednesday that the region is making “good progress” with the number of hospitalizations trending downward as St. Louis city and county gear up to reopen some businesses next week.
The task force’s four hospital systems reported 513 total patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, down from 531 the day before, with 125 patients in intensive care units, down from 137, and 93 on ventilators, down from 94.
Missouri reported 136 more COVID-19 cases on Wednesday for a total of 10,142. Deaths increased by 18 for a total of 542 in the state.
“We’re all tired. We all want to get a haircut. We all want to go out,” Herb Simmons, executive director of the St. Clair Emergency Management Agency, said during a Wednesday briefing. “But we also want us all to be safe and the only way we can do that is to follow what the science is saying ... Some of you don’t like that and I really don’t care, I’m going to follow what the doctors are telling us to do here.”
Erin Heffernan, Robert Patrick and Rachel Rice, of the Post-Dispatch, contributed to this report.