from Worcester Telegram; more conflicting statements from government:

WORCESTER — The city hopes to allow reopening of Walmart store that had a COVID-19 outbreak in the next couple of days, but it won’t open Monday, City Manager Edward M. Augustus said Sunday.

City officials said 81 employees of the Walmart Supercenter at 25 Tobias Boland Way have tested positive for COVID-19. That includes 58 of 391 employees who were tested Thursday and Friday, plus 23 other employees who tested positive before that.

“The store has been professionally cleaned,” Augustus said during Sunday’s press briefing at City Hall. “And the goal is to allow the store to open sometime in the next couple of days. It won’t be tomorrow. But we will let you know when the store will be cleared for opening.”

Dr. Michael P. Hirsh, the city’s medical director, said his team is very close to getting the Walmart up and running again.

“There’re some stray employees that were on leave and weren’t around to be tested on Thursday and Friday,” Hirsh said. “And we want to make sure that they’re tested so that we know that they are not going to be the ones that start an outbreak in the group that we have as negative. Once we know that, and we’re again going to do another inspection from our division in inspectional services, then we should be able to get this store back online.”

Hirsh said it was very unlikely that a customer in “a normal shopping experience” would have close enough contact to catch COVID-19 from someone who has the coronavirus that causes the disease.

“You have to be there 15 minutes in that person’s presence,” Hirsh said. “If you’re doing a routine kind of shopping you’re probably not going to have that kind of close contact. So we would not fear that many people would turn positive from a shopping experience at Walmart.”