ARLINGTON, Va. — Some businesses are still trying to get adjusted to the flow of business in the new normal.
"I would say we're about 75% close to where we were before." Dr. Hooman Hamidi said.
Hamidi is a chiropractor in Arlington, Va. When the global pandemic shut things down, his business slowed to a crawl.
Even though his business was deemed essential, and was able to stay open, the patients just weren’t coming in. He was only seeing a quarter of his normal flow of patients. It's a trend seen across all business because of previous stay-at-home orders.
Now, as people are starting to slowly venture back out, Hamidi is making sure people feel comfortable coming back.
"Basically, we're limiting the number of patients we're seeing throughout the day. Normally, we schedule people every 15 minute, now we have to schedule every 30-45 minutes," Hamidi said.
As more paying customers return, so are his staff.
“We had to make some adjustments -- our front desk -- we had to put her on furlough, but we were able to hire her back as of two weeks ago," Hamidi said.
It's a good sign of things returning to a new normal.
Some businesses actually saw an increase in business during the height of the pandemic. Paul Jamil, one of the owners of Big Bite Pizza said they were surprised by how much their business increased.
"We actually saw a boom, and we're doing better than before." Jamil added.
Jamil added that their business was never forced to close in their 33-year existence prior to the pandemic.
As of Monday, Virginia was an upward trend for the past six days. Three of the last seven days have seen more than 20 deaths per day, which hasn’t happened since the end of May.
Virginia’s new case trend has been on a slight upward trend as well over the past week. It’s been plateaued at around 500-530 new cases a day since June 15, which was 10 days after most of Virginia began Phase 2.
Virginia has lost ground on its coronavirus doubling time, speeding back up from its slowest pace of 84 days to 76 days, as of Monday.
Northern Virginia is entering Phase 3 of reopening. Under Phase 3, here's what would change:
- Social gatherings move up to 250 people
- No limits on the capacity for restaurants and non-essential retail.
- Social distancing would still be required in those indoor dining spaces
- Child care facilities allowed to open.
- Gyms and pools would be able to open up at 75% capacity,
- Personal grooming areas like salons would reopen with mandatory social distancing in place.
- Other businesses like entertainment venues and zoos would be allowed to reopen at 50% capacity with a maximum allowance of 1,000 people
- Overnight summer camps would remain closed