CDC: Dining out and drinking at bars are the pandemic's 2 riskiest activities

Dining out is one of the most likely ways you can contract COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

For a report published Friday, dozens of health care workers surveyed people who'd tested positive for COVID-19 and others who'd tested negative, asking them where they'd been in the past 14 days. Coronavirus-positive patients were twice as likely to have gone to a bar or restaurant in the last two weeks than those who were negative, suggesting those locations drastically increased their chances of getting coronavirus.

When looking at just people who had no close contact with someone who had coronavirus, eating at a restaurant tripled their chances of infection, and going to an indoor bar quadrupled it. That's because "masks cannot be effectively worn while eating and drinking," while the rest of the activities on the list — shopping, using public transportation, and others — "do not preclude mask use," the CDC said.

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It's worth noting that the CDC's survey didn't distinguish between eating inside a restaurant or outside on a patio; it simply asked if a person ate anywhere designated by the restaurant for dining. It did specify an indoor bar.