Some states requiring restaurants to start asking for customers' contact information
Customers of New Hampshire restaurants will soon be asked to provide basic contact information to help facilitate COVID-19 contact tracing investigations.
Gov. Chris Sununu said the requirement will begin Saturday. Customers will be asked for their name and phone number, and restaurants will record their time of arrival.
Sununu said the information will help contact tracing teams if it's learned that someone in the restaurant has COVID-19.
New Hampshire is not alone. In Michigan, all dine-in establishments must keep customers' names and phone numbers for contact-tracing purposes, starting Monday.
"Is it a little bit of a challenge for the industry? Yes it is," said Mike Somers, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association. "Does it certainly create a little bit of pushback from some of our customers? We suspect it likely will."
The proposal came from restaurant owners to be able to assist state health officials with contact tracing and to avoid the public announcements that have been made by the Department of Health and Human Services when trying to track down patrons after a positive case is identified.
"Clearly, that created a great deal of concern from the industry that now we're making this huge impression that restaurants aren't safe to dine at," Somers said.
There have been several clusters of the coronavirus connected with New Hampshire restaurants, and state contact tracers try to get in touch with everyone who was in the restaurant and might have had close contact with the cases at the time. In cases in which not everyone can be located, a public health alert is issued to try to track down anyone else who might have been infected.
Somers said the change is part of the effort businesses are making to be safe.
"Staff are wearing masks," he said. "We're asking our customers to wear masks. We're working on sanitation. We're working on all these things, and if the missing piece in that puzzle is really trying to assist DHHS in their contact tracing, then clearly, this is something that we can step up and do."
"The process has worked very well in other states across the country, including most New England states, which have the exact same protocols, and this kind of information is already collected for those making reservations," Sununu said.
Sununu said that since the request to collect the information came from the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association, he expects the industry to police itself in following the new requirement.
The information is meant to be kept for 21 days and is not to be used for any marketing purposes.
