Dive Brief:

• State and local authorities are starting to require customers and employees of supermarkets to cover their faces when inside grocery stores, the latest step in a campaign by public officials across the United States to stop people from spreading the coronavirus when they leave their homes.

• Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued an executive order Tuesday mandating that employees of non-medical essential businesses, which include grocery stores, wear face coverings that enclose their noses and mouths while performing their jobs. Businesses covered by the order must either their workers with cloth face coverings or reimburse employees for their cost. Customers are also required to cover their faces while in stores. ​The order goes into effect Friday.

• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on Wednesday that employees and customers of retail establishments like grocers that are permitted to operate despite the pandemic must wear face coverings, according to The Hill. Murphy also said stores must limit the number of people they allow in at a single time to half of their approved capacity. Local officials are barred from imposing tougher rules, NJ.com reported.

Dive Insight:

The requirements from multiple jurisdictions that grocery store workers and customers cover their faces follow the CDC’s advice that people wear some kind of face covering when out in public.

In addition to Los Angeles and New Jersey, Irvine, California, south of Los Angeles, last week began requiring workers of grocery stores and other essential businesses to cover their faces while at work, according to The Orange County Register. The city of Costa Mesa, also in Southern California, is developing a similar requirement, the newspaper reported.

Miami, meanwhile, issued an emergency order Wednesday requiring all customers and employees of essential businesses to wear masks or face coverings. The city, which has more than 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, will look to grocery stores and other businesses to enforce the rules, and fine or possibly shut down any that fail to comply. According to the Miami Herald, employees stationed outside a Trader Joe's store were checking to make sure customers' faces were covered.

Council members in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside Washington, announced Tuesday that they intend to roll out a new Board of Health regulation that would require customers and workers of grocery stores and other essential businesses to wear face coverings. The council plans to vote on the regulation on April 14. Employees of these businesses will be required to wear face coverings starting April 16, and customers will have to cover their faces while in stores beginning April 23, Montgomery County officials said. 

In addition, the Pentagon is requiring everybody on U.S. military property, installations and facilities to cover their faces, according to an April 5 memo from Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The uneven rollout of rules meant to stop the virus during the past several weeks by officials across the country means that grocers are having to adapt to a patchwork of regulations instead of being able to adhere to a single set of guidelines.

Some grocers have worked together in an effort to simplify matters. As an example, grocers in Connecticut that belong to the Connecticut Food Association played a role in developing the state’s "Essential Safe Store Rules." The rules, which went into effect April 3, lay out a range of operational requirements for stores operating during the pandemic, and recommend that employees of essential retail businesses wear gloves and face masks when working with customers or handling merchandise "wherever possible."