Becky Goodwin was on “pins and needles all week.”
The owner of Tula Organic Salon & Spa in Squirrel Hill was worried about Gov. Tom Wolf ordering another shutdown.
Goodwin’s business, along with other salons and barber shops in the state, was ordered closed for three months between March and June. She dreaded the thought of going through it all again.
But on Thursday afternoon, while the governor was ordering the closure of restaurants, bars and high school sports until Jan. 4, he gave her and other salon owners a reprieve.
Why would hair-cutting joints be allowed to remain open? State officials presented Meda Higa, an assistant professor of biology at York College. She referenced a case study of hair salons where masking kept people from contracting the coronavirus by stylists who had tested positive for covid-19.
bkibler@altoonamirror.com
With hospitalizations and daily deaths at record highs Thursday, the Wolf administration tightened restrictions again, this time through the holidays, with a prohibition on indoor dining and drinking; closure for gyms, theaters, museums, casinos and bowling alleys; a 50% capacity limit at other in-person businesses; a maximum 10 at indoor gatherings and 50 outdoors and no extracurricular activities at schools.
“We all hoped it would not come to this,” Wolf said during a virtual news conference, acknowledging that the restrictions have been hard on businesses and “crushing” on restaurants and bars and that none of it is their fault. “But the current stage (of the pandemic) did not allow us to wait,” the governor said.
Pennsylvania is temporarily halting school sports and other extracurricular activities, ordering gyms, theaters and casinos to close and banning indoor dining.