Indoor restaurant dining back Monday in South Carolina

COLUMBIA - Restaurants throughout South Carolina can soon reopen with limited, indoor dining service, as Gov. Henry McMaster continues to lift coronavirus-related restrictions and promises to soon discuss reopening other businesses.

Starting Monday, the governor said restaurants could open for indoor dining as long as they kept patrons to 50% occupancy, placed tables 6 to 8 feet apart and followed stringent cleaning and sanitizing guidelines, like keeping hand sanitizer at entrances and removing previously shared condiments from tables.

"A lot of iconic restaurants have actually gone out of business, and the whole state regrets that," the governor said Friday, in announcing what he calls "phase two" of a process to get dining rooms throughout the state back open.

This week, restaurants were allowed to open for limited outdoor dining. Next week, McMaster said he would likely address "close-contact" businesses such as hair and nail salons, which have been closed for weeks to help slow the spread.

McMaster also lifted all remaining restrictions on boating on the state's waterways, meaning boaters can now stop at sandbars instead of being required to keep moving.

"The virus is still here, people are still vulnerable, but we are lifting that restriction," McMaster said of the boating provision.

As the governor's committee studying how to reopen South Carolina passed around ideas Thursday on how to reopen beauty salons, amusement parks, gyms, swimming pools and large venues typically used for weddings, public health officials have pledged to more than triple the number of coronavirus tests performed in the state during the next two months. Dr. Joan Duwve, the new director of public health at the Department of Health and Environmental Control, said the agency wants to test 2% of the population - or about 110,000 people - in both May and June, with most of those tests going to nursing homes.

Beginning Monday, a private lab will be paid $2.5 million out of the agency's emergency funds to test all 40,000 residents and workers in South Carolina's 169 nursing homes. Workers and residents can opt out, and other testing will expand to potential hot spots where ZIP codes of the highest COVID-19 infections rates in the state are found.

South Carolina has been at the bottom of rates of testing compared to the population. But health officials said that was because the federal government was sending testing supplies to the hardest-hit areas.

Experts have advised that a further return to normal for schools and larger gatherings can only happen with large amounts of testing and the ability to trace back anyone an infected person had significant contact with in the past two weeks. DHEC also said it is hiring nearly 1,000 contact tracers to figure out who infected people had close contact with so they can also be isolated and kept from spreading the disease.

There have been 7,367 cases of the coronavirus confirmed in South Carolina and 320 deaths, according to DHEC's Friday update.

The four deaths announced Friday included one person from Clarendon County, where there have now been 25 residents to die. Twelve from Sumter County have died, and Lee County has had eight die.

As classes wrap up for distance learning students, some of the state's public schools are announcing plans to hold in-person commencement ceremonies for graduating seniors, albeit with social distancing in mind.

After surveying seniors and parents for their input, Lexington-Richland School District Five announced Thursday it would hold in-person, outdoor ceremonies in early June for seniors at its high schools. Pickens County graduates will also be awarded diplomas in person, in late May, and both districts are limiting guests so as to help implement social distancing.

Many districts had already announced plans to hold virtual ceremonies, with some saying they still plan in-person events at some point in the future.

Sumter Item Executive Editor Kayla Green contributed to this article.