Pittsburgh's virus success fizzles in crowded bars, eateries

By his estimation, Stephen Santa took Pennsylvania's coronavirus lockdown seriously: He pretty much went only to grocery stores and picked up takeout once a week to help Pittsburgh's restaurants.

Whatever Santa and everyone else in Pittsburgh did, it seemed to work: The city racked up a fraction of the coronavirus cases during the spring shutdown, while the other side of Pennsylvania flared up into a hot spot.

With a state-mandated masking order in place, Pittsburgh's gyms, salons, bars and restaurants got permission to reopen in early June, ahead of many parts of Pennsylvania, as part of the so-called “green” phase in Gov. Tom Wolf's three-step stoplight-colored reopening plan.

Santa promptly went to a nearby Italian restaurant for a meal in its outdoor courtyard with a couple relatives.

When they got there, around 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, it was practically empty. When they left, it was packed inside: every table full, no masks and nobody keeping 3 feet (1 meter) apart, never mind 6 feet (2 meters) apart.

“I think partly a lot of people saw the word ‘green’ and it meant ‘go’ and 'we're going back how things were,'" Santa said.

Barely three weeks later, officials in Allegheny County — home to Pittsburgh and 1.2 million residents — raised the alarm over a spike in COVID-19 cases.

The culprit? Primarily, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who told contact tracers that they had been visiting bars and restaurants or working in them, county officials said.

Thus began a cascade of orders in July shutting down bars and restaurants, or curtailing dine-in service, as Allegheny County battled to keep its outbreak from becoming a full-blown surge like those across southern and western states.

State health officials even blocked an agreement between the Toronto Blue...