Is your takeout safe? Here’s how Fort Worth restaurant inspectors handle coronavirus.
Health inspections at Fort Worth restaurants have dramatically dropped since stay-at-home orders were issued to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Since March 24, when restaurants began operating on a to-go or delivery basis, five restaurants have been cited for health policy violations, according to a Star-Telegram review of the most recent violations between March and mid-April.
Many violations before and after the stay-at-home orders address improper hand-washing stations and a lack of hot water, a lack of paper towels or hand sanitizers, and a lack of signs posted about hand washing. Health officials have said a key way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to wash hands often and thoroughly.
“Our inspections always look for things like hand washing,” said Elmer DePaula, Fort Worth’s assistant director of Code Compliance with oversight of Consumer Health and environmental quality. “That always has been, and always will be, important, including the use of hand sanitizer and the use of disposable gloves.”
Fewer inspections are being done now, as fewer restaurants are open, he said.
Before officials enacted stay at home orders, the city’s 21 health field inspectors averaged between 60 and 80 inspections a week. That has gone down to about 15 inspections a week per inspector, DePaula said.
Many field inspectors also are helping answer questions on coronavirus hotlines and assisting with grocery store inspections. They still respond to customer complaints about food safety and sanitation at restaurants.
When field inspectors visit restaurants, they look for the same violations as they have in the past — whether safety and health rules are being followed. But they now wear masks when they do inspections, DePaula said.
However, cooks and people working in restaurants are not required to wear masks through the city’s Emergency Declaration, according to the city’s Consumer Health Division.
“There’s no science that leads us to believe that masks would be something we could impose on them,” DePaula said.
Diane Cervantes, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UNT Health Science Center, said cooks and food handlers follow safety protocols. The concern isn’t whether cooks and handlers are wearing masks when they prepare the food. It’s if they are wearing masks when they interact with each other.
“The way the virus is transmitted is from one person who is talking or coughing ... to another who breathes in the droplets,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a big concern” that cooks aren’t required to wear masks.
“The general CDC guidance is that it’s very low risk because of the instability of the virus.”
DePaula said inspectors request that restaurant workers wear masks during inspections. “We are trying to set an example so people can see this is a serious illness,” he said.
He also stressed that people can’t get sick with coronavirus by eating take out food.
“There’s no science that suggests that,” DePaula said. “That’s what we know right now.”
Complaints about restaurants may be submitted online at fortworthtexas.gov/health/complaint.
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 12:01 PM.
