Box stores making changes due to COVID-19 threat

At the Roseville Walmart, there’s only one entrance open nowadays.

Customers who want to enter have to walk between two rows of taped-together shopping carts.

Inside, a sign painted on the floor encourages social distancing.

“They got the six-foot thing there,” said John Phipps, of Orlando. “They do have the in and out. Go in a certain way, out a certain way. I like that.”

For shoppers and customers in the metro area, there are big changes at big box stores.

“It’s important, because it’s one way of preventing people from getting sick,” said Abhi Chintakunta, of Minneapolis. “You don’t want them going back to their homes and families, contaminating them.”

Hy-Vee stores are setting up one-way aisles, and sanitizing carts and baskets.

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Soon, they’ll install dividers between shoppers and cashiers.

Target and Walmart are getting masks for employees; Walmart is also planning to check their employee's temperatures.

“It’s very hard to keep distance, too, that’s the problem,” declared James Moussa of New Brighton.

Amid all these changes, Moussa, loading up his car with groceries, said he’s concerned that too many people are shopping at once.

"Next time I won't come,” he said. ” I just order through online and make the pickup. There was a lot of people inside.”

But Walmart is taking action, limiting customers starting Saturday.

Target will do the same.

They’re also putting on hold some curbside pickup, and returns and exchanges for the next three weeks.

A Wisconsin ABC station is reporting that a Menards store there is already taking temperatures of employees and customers.

A spokesperson said Menards will expand that to all their stores as soon as they get enough thermometers.

Chintakunta said at times like these, everyone has to step up.

“Everybody has to do their part,” he said. “Everybody has to be diligent to do it.”