Are Kansas City area stores COVID-19 safe? We visit 50 in five counties to find out
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How thoroughly are customers — and employees — being protected from the spreading coronavirus?
To find out, The Star this past week dispatched six reporters to the five prime counties in the Kansas City area: Johnson, Wyandotte, Jackson, Clay and Platte. We entered 50 stores (not gyms, restaurants or hair salons), 10 in each county, ranging from large chains, such as Walmart, QuikTrip, Target, Bath & Body Works and Hobby Lobby, to regional or even small family-run businesses, like the Red X in Riverside and the New Dimestore in Brookside.
Although hardly scientific, numbers offer a snapshot of what, after even a brief look, shows itself to be an uneven safety landscape — one that could set nerves on edge as likely as calm them.
Of the 50 stores visited:
▪ At a little more than half (54%, 27 stores), every employee wore masks.
▪ At 1 in 4 (24%, 12 stores), zero employees wore masks.
▪ Wyandotte County, already hit hard by the coronavirus, seemed the most vulnerable. Only 1 of 10 stores visited, Beauty Brands, had every employee wearing masks, although Nebraska Furniture Mart had just one employee without one. At six stores, no employees wore masks.
▪ In the other counties, all employees wore masks at 60% to 70% of stores.
▪ Sneeze guards at registers were found at 60% of stores (30 of 50).
▪ About two-thirds provided hand sanitizers and other cleaning supplies for customers (32 of 50).
▪ Size appeared to matter, with chain stores implementing the most precautions on average. Smaller shops tended to have fewer, while still insisting customers were being kept safe.
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