GREAT FALLS — Dante's Creative Cuisine in Great Falls has temporarily closed due to potential exposure to COVID-19 by staff members.
The restaurant said in a Facebook post that they were contacted by the City-County Health Department on Wednesday, August 19th, and told that Dante's had been named as a contact trace location for a confirmed positive COVID-19 case in Great Falls.
Dante's said that on Wednesday, August 12th and Friday, August 14th, restaurant staff was potentially exposed to the virus.
Dante's said that the CCHD did not at any time require the restaurant to close, as they have been following the guidelines in place to protect their staff and customers.
The Facebook post goes on to say: "Unfortunately, we have a very small staff who all work on Friday evenings. Therefore, we made the very difficult, but necessary, decision to temporarily close so our staff is able to quarantine for the required 14 days from exposure. We are doing everything we are able to do to keep not only our Dante’s family and their families safe, but also our amazing community... We look forward to seeing you all again when we reopen on Monday, August 31st."
Unlike most other restaurants that re-opened in June, Dante's remained closed much longer, out of an abundance of caution. They explained in late May: "During the month of June the entire staff will be working together to make some changes and do some floor to ceiling deep cleaning that is hard to accomplish while we are operational!"
The restaurant re-opened on August 6th.
There have been 190 confirmed COVID cases to date in Cascade County. Of those, 137 have recovered, and 48 are currently active. The City-County Health Department in Great Falls confirmed the fifth death in Cascade County on Tuesday morning.
The data below is from the official Montana website on August 19th:
- TOTAL CASES & RECOVERIES: Montana now reports 6,072 cumulative cases statewide, with 4,434 people recovered.
- HOSPITALIZATIONS: There are currently 101 patients hospitalized, one fewer than yesterday. There have been 357 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
- DEATHS: The cumulative number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Montana is 89, an increase of five since yesterday.
- ACTIVE CASES: The state reports there are currently 1,549 active COVID-19 cases in Montana.
- TESTING: The number of tests increased by 1,027 over the previous 24-hour reporting period, for a new cumulative state-wide total of 207,560.
Numbers reported by the state each day occasionally differ from those reported by county public health departments due to periodic lag times in reporting data to the state. We encourage people to check the official website and/or Facebook page of their respective county health department for any updates that are not yet included in the state's daily updates.
