Washington DC, home to some of the toughest anti-Covid regulations in the country, is now reopening, highlighting the United States's steady transition back to normality. — Reuters file picWASHINGTON, May 15 ― With the park in front of the White House reopening this week, selfie-snapping tourists have suddenly reappeared.
By next Friday, six museums run by the famed Smithsonian Institution, and the National Zoo, will once again welcome visitors as vaccination rates climb and infections continue to plunge. So far, DC residents, who are packing the terraces of restaurants and bars, haven't rushed downtown to peruse Phung's selection of caps, T-shirts and other trinkets. Instead the shopkeeper relies heavily on visitors to nearby museums.
“The last few weeks, it was improving,” he said, especially since the city's Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring. His optimism is boosted by increasing arrivals of tourists from Asia and Latin America. “This is our first trip in just over a year,” the couple originally from Algeria said in French. “We were waiting to be fully vaccinated and for the city to get a little busier.”Hotel occupancy in Washington, DC on Saturday, May 1 was only 43.4 per cent, slipping to 42.4 per cent the following Saturday, according to STR, which provides data and analysis for the industry.
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