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Coronavirus: Walmart to resume metering to limit number of guests in stores

As the holiday season — and COVID-19 cases — ramp up, Walmart is reinstating its metering process to measure and limit the number of guests in stores.

The retailer announced in April that it would limit the number of customers permitted in a store at once. The guideline stated five customers would be allowed inside for each 1,000 square feet at a given time, or roughly 20 percent of a store’s capacity. Associates and greeters at doors were tasked with metering the number of customers at entrances.

According to CNBC, Walmart relaxed the policy for a period of time.

The metering will resume Saturday.

“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,” Kory Lundberg, Walmart’s senior director of global communications for corporate affairs, said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have resumed counting the number of people entering and leaving our stores.”

In the event a Walmart location reaches the self-imposed 20% capacity, customers will be instructed to line up outside and will be admitted inside on a “1-out-1-in” basis, the company said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 million coronavirus cases have been reported in the U.S. in the last week. Illinois, Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin, California, Michigan, Ohio and Florida are among the states with the highest numbers of new cases in the last seven days.

More than 10.5 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S. since the onset of the pandemic.

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