- South Coast Plaza is a luxury shopping center in Orange County, California speckled with recognizable luxury brands like Balenciaga, Chanel, Gucci, and Christian Louboutin.
- However, there has been a visible decline in visitors because of the coronavirus scare according to employee accounts and photos taken on a recent visit on March 5.
- Puzzle Box, a toy store in South Coast Plaza, has had to cut back on the number of employees working on Friday mornings because of the lack of shoppers.
- A South Coast Plaza spokesperson claims that the mall has been seeing normal traffic with only a slight decrease in Chinese and Italian tourists because of travel restrictions.
- California has declared a state of emergency, and one person in the state has died because of COVID-19.
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South Coast Plaza - a luxury shopping center in Orange County, California speckled with recognizable luxury brands like Balenciaga, Chanel, Gucci, and Christian Louboutin - has seen a recent decline in visitors because of the coronavirus scare.
As of now, the COVID-19 outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, has killed over 4,000 people and infected over 116,000, although a little over 80% of the cases have been in China. Of that 3,400, one confirmed coronavirus-related death has taken place in California's Placer County.
However, with coronavirus worries increasing and an official state of emergency declared in California, employees in South Coast Plaza stores say they have noticed a decrease in visitors.
"With South Coast Plaza, you get a lot of Asian tourists that come in throughout the whole year," Jason Fish, an employee at the Nordstrom in South Coast Plaza, told Business Insider. "In the summertime we get a lot of that. I feel like not so much right now."