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Sarah Cross decided it was time to close her Bank Street hair salon when a customer refused her polite request to wash his hands before settling in for a hair cut.

She asked him to leave, but the incident reinforced her fears about the vulnerability of her staff and customers in the fight to control the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

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Cross said she had been taking precautions by cleaning and disinfecting constantly, wearing gloves and limiting the number of clients in the salon. “But I thought ‘what am I doing? This is crazy.’

“If people weren’t washing their hands, I wasn’t going to take a chance. Lots of people have travelled … I cannot keep track of where every single person has been, their contacts, one can touch anything.

“I was just overwhelmed by the idea.”

So Cross packed up her computer and hairdressing mannequins from Salon Bliss and headed home on Saturday. Now she joins other Ottawa business owners staring into a scary, uncertain future.