Restau­ran­teur Pe­ter George is not buoyed by the prospect of re­open­ing of in-house din­ing, es­pe­cial­ly as it is de­pen­dent on in­creased vac­ci­na­tion fig­ures.

George is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try and yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that he is not sure when or whether he would re­turn to the coun­try.

"There are a lot of vari­ables that go in­to this, one is of course whether or not we achieve the num­ber that the Prime Min­is­ter is sat­is­fied that we can do the things he said we can do," George said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

"The re­al­i­ty is that we sit now with 29.6 per cent ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed if the da­ta is cor­rect and 37 per cent that has tak­en one shot. As­sume by the end of Sep­tem­ber, for ar­gu­ment sake, that we got up to 37 per cent. We know vac­cine up­take has slowed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. We know that," he said.

"Let's be gen­er­ous and say by the end of Sep­tem­ber we get to 45 per cent, is that a suf­fi­cient enough num­ber for the Prime Min­is­ter to grant us the free­dom of go­ing to restau­rants and cin­e­mas? That is the first ques­tion."

George said re-open­ing for in-house din­ing comes with a cost.

"I would have to put mon­ey in, pull staff out all that kind of stuff for a mar­ket that is go­ing to be at­ro­phied by 50 to 60 per cent be­cause on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons are al­lowed to come," he said.

He said there was al­so the ques­tion of the cur­few.

"I am as­sum­ing if this is to hap­pen that the SoE would be lift­ed. If you are go­ing to do this with a 9 pm cur­few, well, it's re­al­ly a ze­ro-sum game, it takes you ab­solute­ly nowhere.

"There are a lot of vari­ables that are still to be an­swered over the course of Sep­tem­ber. If by Sep­tem­ber we get to 65 or 70 per cent, then quite frankly open the coun­try up be­cause you would achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty. That's the vari­able.

"If we get to 45 by the end of Sep­tem­ber is he go­ing to open the coun­try?" he asked.

"Re­mem­ber he said we may, he has not made a com­mit­ment," George added.

George said that he los­es less mon­ey re­main­ing closed than if he opened and of­fered take­away ser­vice.

"We lose sig­nif­i­cant­ly less mon­ey be­ing closed and it was a very dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion be­cause the mon­ey that we saved was in salary. Peo­ple are still wait­ing four-and-a-half-months lat­er for the grants promised by the Gov­ern­ment. It is such a ten­u­ous en­vi­ron­ment. Can I sus­tain it? No," he said.

But George is adamant.

"I es­sen­tial­ly will live and die on my terms," he said.

George said he could not "sit on his hands and wait every Sat­ur­day to see what sprin­kling of sug­ar" they would get from the Gov­ern­ment.

On Fri­day Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley out­lined plans for a grad­ual re­open­ing of the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor in­clud­ing casi­nos, restau­rants bars and gyms.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that that sec­tor would re­open in Oc­to­ber, once the vac­ci­na­tion num­bers con­tin­ue to climb.

Joseph's restau­rant shuts its door

Mean­while, Joseph's restau­rant in Rook­ery Nook in Mar­aval has fall­en vic­tim to the COVID-19 shut­downs and yes­ter­day said it would be re­vamp­ing its busi­ness mod­el un­der new man­age­ment.

In an an­nounce­ment post­ed on the com­pa­ny's so­cial me­dia page, the Lebanese restau­rant said that its jour­ney start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2001 but "our era will be no more from Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021." It said that a "new gen­er­a­tion" would take the reigns of the restau­rant and the "Joseph's you know will be di­ver­si­fied."