PUBLISHED SAT, NOV 14 202010:38
AM ESTUPDATED MON, NOV 16 202012:15 PM EST
KEY POINTS
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Walmart beginning Saturday is resuming monitoring and counting
the number of customers entering its stores, as Covid cases surge in the U.S.
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Dating back to April, Walmart has been restricting the number of
people in its big-box stores to not exceed five customers per every roughly
1,000 square feet, or about 20% of a store’s capacity.
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For a period of time, however, the biggest retailer in the
United States had stopped physically counting people as they came inside and
left.
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Grocers like Kroger, Wegmans and Publix have also reinstated
buying limits for items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Customers shop at a
Walmart store on May 19, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. Walmart reported a 74%
increase in U.S. online sales for the quarter that ended April 30, and a 10%
increase in same store sales for the same period as the effects of the
coronavirus helped to boost sales.
Scott Olson | Getty
Images
Walmart beginning Saturday is resuming
monitoring and counting the number of customers entering its stores, to make
sure it doesn’t exceed capacity limits, as coronavirus cases
surge at record rates across the country.
Dating back to April, Walmart has been
restricting the number of people in its big-box stores to not exceed five
customers per every roughly 1,000 square feet, or about 20% of a store’s
capacity. Those levels can also vary based on local mandates, the company said.
For a period of time, however, the biggest
retailer in the United States had stopped physically counting people as they
came inside and left.
“We know from months of metering data in our
stores that the vast majority of the time our stores didn’t reach our
self-imposed 20% metering capacity,” a Walmart spokesman told CNBC in an
emailed statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have resumed counting
the number of people entering and leaving our stores.”
The move comes as America continues to push new
Covid records. More than 68,500 are hospitalized with Covid-19 across the
country, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data
from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by
journalists at The Atlantic.
And cases continue to rise. Over the past seven
days, the U.S. has reported an average of over 139,900 cases per day, up more
than 35% compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data
compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average of daily new cases
has hit a fresh record every day for at least the past ten days, Hopkins data
shows.
Major grocery chains have now started
reinstating purchasing limits on certain items, such as toilet paper and hand
sanitizer. In the spring, when the pandemic arrived in the U.S., frantic consumers flocked to stores, stockpiled, and left
shelves barren of grocery staples like canned beans and frozen veggies.
The industry referred to the reaction as “panic buying.” Many retailers were
unprepared for the surge in spending on necessities.
Kroger and Florida-based Publix Super
Markets earlier this month reinstated buying limits on bath tissue and paper
towels.
Giant Food, an American supermarket chain that
operates locations across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia,
is again limiting purchases of toilet paper and paper towels.
Wegmans has placed limits on paper towels,
household cleaners and disinfecting wipes.
Retailers and grocers must now navigate the
pandemic during the holiday season, which tends to draw more people to stores
to buy gifts and ingredients for family dinners.
In an effort to spread out customers’ holiday
visits, Walmart has said it will still have in-store Black Friday
sales, but the company is breaking them up into three different
sales events.
—CNBC’s Will
Feuer contributed to this story.
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