How safe is dining inside an enclosed outdoor tent at restaurants?

PITTSBURGH — With cold weather upon us, you may have seen a lot of these outside your neighborhood restaurants.

A lot of places are setting up outdoor tents with experts saying the risk of spreading coronavirus is lower outside, but it got us wondering.

When you’re sitting an enclosed tent, is the risk the same as sitting inside a building?

Mike Mitcham, the operations director for Primanti Brothers, said his restaurant worked with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership to put up this tent in Market Square. It has tables, chairs and a heating system.

“I think every little thing that we can do. We’re going to try to do. We just try to operate through it in the guidance that’s given to us, you know, kind of, at this point it’s, you know, changing on week to week, so we’re doing what we can,” Mitcham said.

And he’s not alone. The owners at The Warren in downtown are putting out heating lamps and plastic coverings to keep customers who are eating outside comfortable.

And a block over, the owners of Tako on Sixth Street are putting up igloos for a trial run this weekend. You’ll have to make a reservation and pay a special booking fee for the igloo. Each space comes with it’s on table, chairs, heating, blankets and an Amazon Alexa to play your favorite music while you eat.

But we wanted to know with COVID-19 cases on the rise, how safe are you if you do decide to eat inside one of these?

“it all depends upon who’s within those tents. If you’re sitting in an igloo with someone that you live with that’s in your household, the risk is just the same as it would be in any other situation dining with that type of person, and it’s relatively low,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja.

But Adalja said the risk for COVID-19 transmission increases when your inside a tent or igloo with multiple groups of people.

“You should think about the fact that that when you do these types of activities, there’s likely to be somebody in the vicinity that has the virus and restaurants are doing a pretty good job of trying to mitigate that risk and trying to comply with all of the COVID-19 measures that are in place, but the risk is always going to be greater than zero,” Adalja said.

The owners of Tako provided us with more information about the igloos they’ll soon have up:

“We will only seat people who come together in an igloo we will seat a minimum of four people and a maximum of 6 people.

We’re shooting for the igloos to be up this weekend at Täkō for a trial run. Beginning next week we’ll take reservations in two hour time blocks, you’ll have to call to reserve the spaces. There will be a minimum spend requirement to book them and we’re still discussing those details. The spaces will have their own heaters and Amazon Alexas so you can play your own music. There will be a real cozy holiday lounge vibe in each one. Were shooting to have 6-7 igloos at Tako and possibly a few at Poulet Bleu. We’re really excited to bring them to Downtown! We’ve been working with local health officials to determine the best way to clean and sanitize them between each use and are looking forward to providing an alternate dining experience to the community. People can check out our social media pages for more information as it becomes available. Quite a few of us have experienced them in other cities over the years and knew they would be perfect for Pittsburgh.

Once the PDP blocked off the street for us to expand outdoor dining we knew that we wanted to do something like that for the winter season. We’ve actually had them ordered for a while now and have been patiently eating for them to come in. And eventually Poulet Bleu if we get them there.”

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Cox Media Group