Tyler Perry pitches in to help fired workers of his favorite restaurant; New York raises fine for people ignoring social distancing rules, the PGA announces new dates and more.
We’ve entered week four of the #coronavirus; so far, there are 1,397,165 cases, 80,930 deaths, and 298,513 recoveries. New reports have shown we are about to go into the virus’ peak, in which thousands more cases will surface amid the pandemic. Local and federal officials have urged residents to stay home unless there is a need for essential items in order to curve the spread of the virus, but unfortunately, some essential workers have fallen to the disease after serving as a frontline employee.
Grocery store workers at major supermarket chains like Walmart and Trader Joes have died after being exposed to coronavirus by shoppers. Trader Joes in Scarsdale, N.Y. and two Walmart employees from the same Chicago-area store have died of COVID-19 in the past few days, the companies reported on Monday. The number of employee deaths is expected to rise, and now corporations are demanding workers wear face masks and gloves to deter the virus. “One of the biggest mistakes supermarkets made early on was not allowing employees to wear masks and gloves the way they wanted to,” supermarket analyst Phil Lempert said. “They’re starting to become proactive now, but it’s still going to be much tougher to hire hundreds of thousands of new workers. We’re going to start seeing people say, ‘I’ll just stay on unemployed instead of risking my life for a temporary job.'”
In addition, Walmart, Target, and other stores in Vermont have been ordered to stop selling non-essential items, according to People. The state’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development stated in a press release last week that the order has been issued to reduce the number of people coming into stores. Stores in Vermont will no longer be able to sell items like toys and clothes to customers. In Miami, all employees and customers must now wear some type of face-covering when going to grocery stores, pharmacies, and restaurants, Local 10 News reports.
New York is also doubling down on its fines for people who disobey the state’s social distancing orders. On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo raised the fine for violating the state’s social distancing rules to $1,000. “You don’t have the right to risk someone else’s life,” Cuomo said during a news conference Monday. “You don’t have the right, frankly, to take health care staff and people who are literally putting their lives on the line and be cavalier or reckless with them. You just don’t have the right,” he added.
He ended his statement, saying, “There has been a laxness on social distancing, especially over this past weekend that is just wholly unacceptable,” the governor said. “People are dying. People in the health care system are exposing themselves every day to tremendous risk walking into those emergency rooms, and then they have to go home to their family and wonder if they caught the virus and they’re bringing it home to their family.”
In the meantime, fans won’t be missing any updates from their favorite shows like #RHOA, as the reality TV series is set to continue filming the show but online. “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star #KandiBurress went live on Instagram and said the show will be taping its new season online, as well. “They let us know the other day that we are going to be … we’re going to have to do, I guess, an online type of reunion situation,” she explained. “Some of the girls was going back and forth, you would’ve thought it had been a reunion on the text messages.”
She continued:” I said, ‘Damn! Can y’all save all this for the actual reunion? We don’t get paid for your text messages to be all out of pocket, you know what I mean?’ It’s a mess! I don’t know if y’all have been catching the shade here and there on some of the blogs, but the shade got real real on the text yesterday.” Production has already wrapped for the season, and the finale is set to premiere on Sunday, April 12.
Other updates include this year’s U.S. Open, Masters and PGA championship being rescheduled. According to newsday.com, the Masters tournament will now be played in November, the U.S. Open will be postponed until September, and the PGA Championship has been pushed to August. #DerekFisher and fiancé #GloriaGovan were forced to put their wedding, which was scheduled for this weekend, on hold and are now using the time to give back to medical workers on the frontline. “We’ve gotten involved in donating both masks and .. actually, my sister who is a nurse at North, we’ve actually spoken to her, and we’re gonna start donating food to the frontline as well,” the couple said during an interview with TMZ on Monday. “Currently, we’ve had a furlough about 70-percent of our employees.”
And speaking of celebs and restaurants. Tyler Perry gave a $500 tip to each worker at Houston’s this past Sunday. There were 42 workers, which came out to a $21,000 tip. Perry frequents the chain and has been going to the restaurant up until it closed down.
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