- Walmart has restarted counting visitors to each store to ensure too many people aren’t going in at once.
- Walmart announced the change as COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the US, and some states impose partial lockdowns.
- Walmart first restricted store capacity to 20% in April, and between then and October staff monitored how many people entered stores.
- “Out of an abundance of caution, we have resumed counting the number of people entering and leaving our stores,” a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Walmart is once again counting how many people enter and leave its stores as nationwide cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, CNN first reported Sunday.
Many US states have introduced travel and public gathering controls in the run up to Thanksgiving, and some — including Washington and Michigan, which on Sunday announced partial lockdowns — have placed restrictions on the capacity of stores.
Walmart first began restricting customer numbers in early April. Stores were only allowed to reach 20% of their visitor capacity, though local guidelines could push this lower, and staff controlled how many customers could enter at a time.
Though the 20% limit remained in place, the retailer stopped counting the number of customers in early October, it told Business Insider. Stores rarely, if ever, breached the 20% mark even after they stopped counting, it said.
Over the weekend, it restarted monitoring again.
"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 spokesperson told Business Insider.
"Out of an abundance of caution, we have resumed counting the number of people entering and leaving our stores."
Walmart has also revised its Black Friday offering to make it "safer and more manageable for both our customers and our associates" amid the pandemic, it said in October.
The retailer is launching its deals over three separate days, two of which have already happened, and it will release offers online at least two days before they hit stores.
Walmart will also limit the number of Black Friday shoppers to just 20% of store capacity. Customers will have to form a line to enter the store, and staff will sanitize shopping carts and remind customers to wear masks.
COVID-19 cases across the US have been spiraling as the country is hit by a third wave of the virus.
In the week to November 16, the US recorded a record 1 million new COVID-19 cases, bringing its total to 11 million cases. It has reported more cases than any other country in the world.