Residents line up for COVID-19 tests at Pritzker College Prep High School in the Hermosa Ward on November 30, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images News | Getty images
A local bar that opened in a rural Illinois county in early February was linked to at least 46 new coronavirus cases and a school shutdown that affected 650 children, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.
The number of cases per capita has doubled as a result of the opening of the bar, the CDC said. Before the event, the province averaged up to 42 cases per 100,000 people for seven days. That daily average of the case more than doubled 14 days after opening, the CDC said.
The case, highlighted in an investigative article released Monday, offers more evidence of how weddings and gatherings in restaurants and nightclubs have the potential to become super-spreading events for Covid-19.
After routine investigation of the case, local health officials identified a cluster of cases associated with a handful of people at the opening of the indoor bar, including a participant who had been diagnosed with asymptomatic Covid-19 the day before and was still going. Four people who had symptoms and later tested positive for the virus were there that night too.
“These findings show that opening up environments such as bars, where mask wearing and physical distance are challenging, can increase the risk of community transmission,” the CDC said.
A bar attendee who later tested positive identified 26 close contacts they had while attending school for indoor sports practice or in-person instruction. Two student athletes also tested positive, leading local officials to close the school district after potentially more than a dozen staff were exposed.
Another bar visitor worked in a long-term care facility where a staff member and two residents were positively identified days after the event. At least one resident was hospitalized before being released the same day. Nobody was vaccinated.
On Feb. 26, 12 people in eight different homes who were in contact with people at the bar that night tested positive for Covid-19, including five school-aged children, the study said. No one was hospitalized.
“This research further shows that inconsistent mask use and insufficient physical distance in an indoor environment can increase transmission risk,” wrote the CDC.[Covid-19] transmission coming from a business such as a bar not only affects the bar’s customers and employees, but can also affect an entire community. “
The CDC said the findings are subject to at least four limitations. First, the interviews were voluntary and did not provide complete information to many members of the community, therefore the number of cases reported in the study is likely to be lower than the actual number of cases.
It was also likely that not all asymptomatic cases were counted and not all contacts were tested. Information about individual behavior, such as wearing masks and social distance, was not collected from people with positive results. Finally, no specimens were available for whole genome sequencing, therefore it could not be determined whether variant Covid strains were responsible for the increase in transmission.
The CDC says a multi-component approach such as enforcement of proper mask wearing, social distance, indoor capacity reduction, adequate ventilation, and contact tracking should be implemented to prevent the spread of the virus before opening establishments such as bars and restaurants.