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UK pub installs electric fence to enforce social distancing

Updated  July 16, 2020 4:49pm EDT
Unusual
FOX TV Digital Team

Britain, France debate on whether to require residents to wear masks

Scientists and researchers believe that the countries should have implemented mask requirements much earlier.

LONDON - As businesses reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, one U.K. pub has devised a unique way of ensuring its guests comply with social distancing orders — the bar’s owners installed an electric fence to separate the bar staff from their patrons.  

The Star Inn, located in St. Just, Cromwell, said its staff got tired of some patrons ignoring social distancing guidelines, FOX News reported, so the bar installed the wired electrified fence to shock locals into behaving.

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One local visitor posted a photo of the electric wire fence showing an attached sign warning customers to keep their distance from the bar. 

Star Inn landlord Johnny McFadden told CornwallLive, a local news outlet, that the fence is normally left off, but “it can be turned on.”

While the U.K. pub’s move may seem humorous to some, it comes at a time when many bars and other businesses in the U.S. are being forced to close their doors again amid a spike in coronavirus cases in states across the country.

On July 13, California Gov. Gavin Newsom extended the closure of bars and indoor dining statewide and ordered gyms, churches and hair salons shuttered in most places as coronavirus cases continue to rise in the nation’s most populated state. 

Bars in other hard-hit states were ordered shut as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who led one of the nation’s most aggressive reopenings amid the pandemic, forced bars in the state to close after a series of record-breaking days of new COVID-19 cases reported in the state. 

RELATED: Disney World offering mask-free 'relaxation zones'

The Florida Department of Health reported Sunday a total of 269,811 cases of COVID-19 statewide, resulting in 4,242 deaths — a sharp daily increase of 15,300 cases and 45 deaths since the numbers reported in the state on Saturday.

“If the basics aren’t followed, there is only one way this pandemic is going to go,” said the director of the World Health OrganizationTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”


The Associated Press and FOX 35 Orlando contributed to this story. This story was reported from Los Angeles.