Mayor Muriel Bowser declared that restaurants would be limited to takeout and outdoor dining only. The order also shuts down museums, limits libraries to pick up and drop-off, and requires workers at non-essential businesses to work remotely.
The order goes into effect on Wednesday and lasts until Jan. 15.
The number of hospitalizations has multiplied since November to 246 with and 80 in the ICU, Bowser's office said, while the infection rate has grown to 35.22 per 100,000.
The order notes the initial rollout of vaccines and says that "taken together, legal restrictions, self-limitation of activity, and the vaccine’s deployment can prevent disease, save lives and prevent a crisis at our hospitals."
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The move is likely to face resistance from restaurant groups, who claim that such restrictions are bad, and there is no proof of a clear link between indoor dining and coronavirus infecting.
Bowser’s move came the same week as indoor dining was shut down in New York City, even as New York state issued contract-tracing data which showed bars and restaurants accounted for just 1.43% of COVID-19 cases in the three months ending in November.
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Bowser has encountered pushback over a number of restrictions, as well as her own actions during the pandemic.
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On Wednesday, Bowser loosened coronavirus restrictions on houses of worship, following a lawsuit from the Archdiocese of Washington, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
The new mandate allows houses of worship to allow 25% of their capacity for 250 people, whichever number is fewer. Houses of worship were previously capped at 50 people.
“We’re falling into a trap of sensationalism,” John Ioannidis, The Stanford University medical professor, told the documentary filmmakers interviewing him remotely on March 23 as he sat in a studio at Stanford. “We have gone into a complete panic state.”
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At a time when President Trump was notoriously at war with his own administration’s medical experts, Ioannidis’s doubts about the wisdom of lockdowns became part of the rancorous debate about how the country should respond to the threat of covid-19. His thoughts in a series of appearances on Fox News, CNN and other news networks were seized on by right-wing firebrands seeking to discredit public-health officials and reopen the economy. It was an exceptional turn for Ioannidis, a longtime evangelist for science-based health policies who has argued for fervent gun-control rules and the cancellation of the tobacco industry.
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