Progress restored: State advances reopening, sets date for sports event attendance

Feb. 26—SALEM — Starting Monday, the state will ease restrictions on some businesses and lift capacity limits on restaurants.

Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday announced that as of March 1, the state will shift back to Phase 3, Step 2 of its reopening plans. The move means businesses can operate at 50% capacity and allow indoor entertainment. Restaurants can also eliminate capacity restrictions, as long as tables are more than 6 feet apart and seat no more than six people for no longer than 90 minutes.

"We're finally making some progress on a lot of things that'll dramatically improve people's abilities, and some of their choices, as we go forward," Baker said in an empty function space at Ledger, a restaurant on Washington Street in downtown Salem.

By Thursday, hospitalizations due to COVID-19 were at 875, down from 2,428 on Jan. 4, Baker said. That's a 63% decrease, and "across all intensive care beds, we've seen about a 52% reduction since early January. And yesterday, the Department of Public Health reported 1,788 new cases out of 114,127 new tests. That's a less than 2% positivity rate. We haven't seen numbers like that since... you go back to October."

With that, Baker set a date for Phase 4, Step 1 — March 22, but only if the data keeps going in the right direction, he said.

"That'll make it possible for several large venues, many of them businesses that have been closed since the beginning of the pandemic, to reopen with strict safety measures in place and capacity limits," Baker said.

Venues in the category include the state's biggest: Gillette Stadium, Fenway Park, and TD Garden. They'll be locked to 12% capacity and must submit reopening plans to the state before allowing any crowds.

Phase 4 will also allow public gatherings to hit 100 indoors and 150 outdoors, Baker said, but private gatherings will stay at 25 per outdoor gatherings and 10 indoors — far less than the number of media and public officials who were gathered at Ledger for the announcement.

Ledger owner Matt O'Neil celebrated the news, saying the increase in capacity will "be huge, because with Ledger, it's a big, square box."

"We can configure the tables to be socially distanced and get more people in toward our max capacity," O'Neil said. "You won't be at 100% because you need to follow social distancing guidelines, but we do have a lot of space here."

Christopher Carlozzi, senior state director at the National Federation of Independent Business, also praised the news. The organization has more than 5,000 members in Massachusetts.

"This reopening announcement is good news for many desperate business owners who have been forced to remain closed without revenue for months, simply because their type of business involves bringing groups of people together," Carlozzi said in a statement. "The pandemic was especially devastating for certain industries, and we can only hope this, along with widespread vaccinations bring people back to stores, restaurants, and other hard-hit businesses once again."

Vaccine update

Baker's announcement was somewhat muted as residents eligible for COVID-19 vaccines continued to have difficulty scheduling appointments Thursday. He repeatedly answered questions from reporters on site functionality by saying an increase in vaccine supply from the federal government would improve problems with the site.

"We have made progress," Baker said when asked if the signup process will improve by the time more appointments become available. "The number of people who will get first-dosed is going to go up by at least 130,000 every single week, but everybody who wants to get vaccinated isn't going to be able to get vaccinated right away."

Pressed again, Baker said more appointments will eliminate competition and get people through the system faster. Until then, all the state can do is keep asking for more doses.

"I get the fact that that's frustrating and anxiety-provoking for everybody," Baker said. "We made a number of improvements to the website over the course of the past several weeks, which were all based on guidance and input we got from folks in the community. And we'll continue to add functionality if that functionality, we believe, will improve the user experience."

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.