MANASQUAN, NJ – When New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichili cited Leggett’s Sandbar as the reason why Governor Phil Murphy was pushed to shut down bars across New Jersey, she cited several bar workers contracting COVID-19. The part she left out was that none of those workers contracted COVID-19 through their employment at the bar.
Leggetts, who has now been defamed and accused falsely by the governor and the health commissioner issued a statement yesterday explaining what happened…and it wasn’t because bar workers were moving up and down the bar serving drinks as claimed by Murphy.
“In mid-October, several of Leggett’s employees tested positive for Covid 19, a circumstance that was traced to an external event outside of the restaurant. As a precautionary follow-up, management instructed all employees to be tested given their proximity to those who attended the earlier event,” Leggetts said. “When a number of additional positive tests were identified, Leggett’s closed its doors in the interest of public safety. This lasted for two weeks and until every affected employee was retested and registered a negative result. As such, the restaurant has reopened for business and will honor the recently-identified governmental protocols moving forward.”
So, the claims made by Governor Phil Murphy to shut down an entire industry across the entire state were not based on facts, but simply assumptions. Neither Murphy nor Persichili divulged that information on Monday but used a false claim that the workers were in a bar, serving alcohol, infecting each other and their customers was a flat out lie…or at minimum, intentionally misleading or misinformed.
Governor Phil Murphy is not expected to reverse his closure order after these findings appear to prove those claims to be false.