In addition to our normal news coverage, What Now Atlanta is tracking ways Atlanta’s businesses are adapting to the novel coronavirus and the challenges it brings to brick-and-mortars.
As Georgia’s businesses prepare to start opening as early as Friday, the Governor’s office this week in stages is rolling out guidelines for doing so.
Late-Tuesday the Georgia Board of Cosmetology and Barbers issued the first round of reopening safety guidelines.
Salons, barbershops, and other beauty-related businesses are among the first brick-and-mortars able to start reservicing customers on April 24.
“I am very happy that Governor Kemp decided that we can reopen our salons and spas,” Kay Kendrick, chair of the Georgia State Board of Cosmetology and Barbers, said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
“We have 95,000 licensees under our board, most of whom are independent contractors that have no other source of income.”
Salon/shop owners and managers are advised to use the OSHA “Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19” as a guide for reopening, and below are some of the top-level guidelines for salon and spa operators to follow.
The complete list of guidelines can be found here.
Temperature Checks: Salons should consider the use of a touchless infrared thermometer to check the temperature of employees each day and of each client who enters the salon/shop.
Screening Questions: Ask each client entering the shop the following questions – Have you had a cough? Have you had a fever? Have you been around anyone exhibiting these symptoms within the past 14 days? Are you living with anyone who is sick or quarantined?
Limit People In Shops/Salons: Salons/shops should consider seeing clients by appointment only. Salons/shops should consider telephonic or online scheduling. Limit the number of persons in the waiting area of the salon/shop. It is recommended that clients wait outside the salon/shop in their vehicle until the cosmetologist or barber is ready to serve them. It is recommended that persons not being serviced in the salon/shop wait outside the salon/shop.
Maintain Social Distancing: Spacing between persons in the salon should be at least six feet at all times. Salons/shops should consider additional spacing between booths, divider shields, and/or alternate work schedules.
Use of Personal Protective Equipment and Best Practices: Salon/shop employees will be required to wear masks at all times. Salons may want to consider providing masks to clients. Clients should wear face masks to the extent possible while receiving services. Salons/shops should also make use of face shields, gloves, disposable or re-washable capes, smocks, neck strips, etc. These items should be disinfected or disposed of between each client. Employees should arrive at the salon/shop showered and wearing clean clothing and change clothes before leaving the salon/shop each day. Hand washing with soap and warm water, for a minimum of 20 seconds will be required by employees between every client service.
Disinfection: All salons/shops should be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected prior to reopening. Disinfect all surfaces, tools, and linens, even if they were cleaned before the salon/shop was closed. Salons/shops should maintain regular disinfection of all tools, shampoo bowls, pedicure bowls, workstations, treatment rooms, and restrooms. Additionally, salons/shops should remove all unnecessary items (magazines, newspapers, service menus, and any other unnecessary paper products/decor) from reception areas and ensure that these areas and regularly touched surfaces are consistently wiped down, disinfected, and that hand sanitizer is readily available to clients and staff. Avoiding the exchange of cash can help in preventing the spread of the virus, but if this is unavoidable, be sure to wash and sanitize hands well after each transaction. The use of credit/debit transactions is preferred, using touch/swipe/no signature technology.
Administration: Employees who are sick will be expected to stay home. Salon/shop owners/managers should provide training, educational materials, and reinforcement on proper sanitation, hand washing, cough and sneeze etiquette, use of PPE, and other protective behaviors. Ensure break rooms are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized and not used for congregating by employees. Be flexible with work schedules/salon hours to reduce the number of people (employees and clients) in salons/shops at all times in order to maintain social distancing.
[Featured photo: Loop Salon // Curls Understood]
[Editor’s note: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is rapidly evolving as is its effect on Atlanta, and the City’s businesses and its residents. Click here for What Now Atlanta’s ongoing coverage of the crisis. For guidance and updates on the pandemic, please visit the C.D.C. website.]
One Response
Biggest manhunt and reaction to a crime in world history was all based on lies, an inside job of epoch proportion now proven. 1993 Petaluma kidnapping truth exposed and now causing consternation with Trump Administration trying to preserve counterproductive and brutal police state with marshal law, censorship, pre-COVID-19 court claim rejections, and despicable acts of corruption and law enforcement crimes. Cover-ups, transparency law violations, possible murders of those involved who knew too much all documented, much like because of what happened with White Water, Waco and the Branch Davidians, and the seven Navy Seals who allegedly killed Osama Bin Laden. See https://www.challengecentralizedauthority.com/2020/02/09/news/ .
Four International tax shelters where you don’t have to pay taxes, combined with insurance against rare tax audit losses for a legal domestic tax revolt, with an effort over decades to work with the ACLU to make jails and prisons too expensive to maintain, have caused major inmate release numbers. Major rise in dead police offers, some contract killings and letters sent to inmates contacting outside hit men because of dead pools, tax loss, and budget cut awareness, to expedite more prison releases, have occurred. Insurance, or what some may call raffle winnings, that cannot be made illegal, for dead pool bets, evictions, foreclosures, and the commission of victimless crimes, also now available to further wear down the system. See https://www.SurviveWorldWar3.com.
Censorship is not possible here with foreign website hosting and competition for ICANN in Baltimore, MD, since October 1, 2019, and postal letters, much to the chagrin of Trump. COVID-19 is crippling the economy for more unreported deaths of police officers, and causing more loss of tax revenue, and the disease being spread because of bad habits of those spending too much time at home, who still have the right to leave. Desperation of using the Federal Reserve to make and spend more money may lead to coup d’etat, threatened before and reported by Google News.
More riling-up of the people, especially opponents, expected, as progressive tax laws or any laws regarding the wealthy and powerful were never enforceable. The need to go tax-less and buy a gun will be imperative.
James Dante Wood