On June 29, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order requiring bars to close down in order to prevent the continued spike of coronavirus cases in the state after allowing them to be reopened for just six weeks following the spring coronavirus shutdown.
Gyms, indoor movie theaters, water parks and river tubing operations were also similarly ordered closed.
On Thursday, July 23, facing a continued increase in cases, Gov. Ducey extended that order for another two weeks, with a requirement for continued re-examination every two weeks.
“Over recent weeks, Arizona has made significant progress to contain the spread of COVID-19, but we cannot let up,” Gov. Ducey said in a press release. “COVID-19 remains widespread in our communities, putting lives and public health at risk. We have to continue to press on and keep doing the things that are
working: Wearing a mask, staying physically distant, avoiding congregating and activities that lead to congregating, and staying home as much as possible.”
In the Verde Valley, cases continue to increase, though below their highest rates since the beginning of the pandemic. In the week from Tuesday, July 21 through Tuesday, July 28, the Verde Valley had 67 new cases, leading to a total of 209 cases in Cottonwood, 93 in Sedona, 115 in Camp Verde, 26 in Cornville, 34 in Rimrock, 48 in Clarkdale and one elsewhere in the area. This increase is significantly lower than the biggest one-week increase in cases recorded so far, when 99 new cases were identified the week of June 24 through July 1. As of July 28, there are 1,647 total cases confirmed in Yavapai County since the outbreak, an increase of 13.4% in the past week. The county had 7 deaths from COVID-19 in the past week, leading to a total of 56 since the beginning of the pandemic.
For bars in the area, the ongoing closure is frustrating, though bar owners and managers expressed a desire to ensure that local residents remain safe.
“Our struggle continues to be the balance of public safety and health versus [how it is] now over four months of no deposit into my business bank account,” Kerrie Snyder, owner of the 10-12 Lounge in Clarkdale, said. “I get frustrated and I get angry, and then I realize that this is real, and we have to be really careful about putting people in an environment that could be potentially dangerous and unsafe.”
“The governor’s extension comes as no surprise. I expected this. Nobody believed it would be 30 days,” Sean Morris, manager of State Bar in Old Town Cottonwood, wrote in an email. “We’re treading water, trying to sell beer to go. Community support is key and our sales over the last few weeks have been trending upward. We hope to continue that trend and stay afloat. Times are tough, but we’ll get through it. We have no other choice.”
Snyder did not open her bar during the reopening, worried at the time about the threat to public safety and the possibility of a new shutdown. Most of her employees have been receiving the boosted $600 weekly
unemployment benefits that the federal government allocated as part of the CARES Act, which ended this week.
But Snyder said that the biggest difficulty of the prolonged shutdown is not the shutdown itself, but the ongoing uncertainty.
“In the beginning, had the order been, ‘We’re going to shut down for six months, or in your situation six months’ — because that’s really what it’s starting to be — there would have been an opportunity to start developing a different plan of action. For me, I have a mortgage on a property, and I have fantastic employees. I don’t know what that would have been, but maybe I could have gone out there and done some completely different business. I could have figured out how to sell bikes. I could have come up with a completely different model knowing it was something I had to do for six months.”
