More pain than gain
Flagging fitness industry fights notion gyms are unsafe in COVID pandemic
AFTER shutting down in the spring, America’s empty gyms are beckoning a cautious public back for workouts.
To reassure wary customers, owners have put in place a variety of coronavirus control measures. At the same time, the fitness industry is pushing back against what it sees as a misleading narrative that gyms have no place during a pandemic.
In the first months of the coronavirus outbreak, most public health leaders advised closing gyms, erring on the side of caution. As infections exploded across the country, states ordered gyms and fitness centers closed, along with restaurants, movie theaters and bars. State and local officials consistently branded gyms as high-risk venues for infection.
The benefits of gyms are clear. Regular exercise staves off depression and improves sleep, and staying fit may be a way to avoid a serious case of COVID-19. But there are clear risks: Lots of people moving around indoors, sharing equipment and air and breathing heavily could be a recipe for easy viral spread. There are scattered reports of coronavirus cases traced back to specific gyms. But gym owners say those are outliers.
At NW Fitness in Seattle, everything from a set of squats to a run on the treadmill requires a mask. Every other cardio machine is off-limits. The owners have marked up the floor with blue tape to show where each person can work out.
Member Esmery Corniel, 27, has
resumed his workout routine with the punching bag. He said he feels comfortable in the gym with its new safety protocols.
Higher costs, fewer customers
Under Washington state’s coronavirus rules, only about 10 to 12 people at a time are permitted in this 4,000-squarefoot gym.
“It’s drastically reduced our ability to serve our community,” said John Carrico. He and his wife, Jessica, purchased NW Fitness at the end of last year. The small Seattle gym has struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic. Membership has plummeted. Meanwhile, the cost of running such businesses has gone up dramatically. The gym now must be staffed round-the-clock to keep up with
cleaning requirements and to ensure people are following the rules.
Keeping the gym open 24/7 — previously a big selling point for members — is no longer feasible. In the past three months, it has lost more than a third of its membership.
“If the trend continues, we won’t be able to stay open,” said Jessica Carrico, who also works as a nurse at a homeless shelter.
Self-reporting by gyms
A company that sells member databases and software to gyms has been compiling data during the pandemic. (The data, drawn from 2,877 gyms, is by no means comprehensive because it relies on gym owners to self-report incidents in which a positive coronavirus case was detected at the gym or was somehow connected to the gym.) The report found that the overall “visits to virus” ratio of 0.002 percent is “statistically irrelevant” because only 1,155 cases of the coronavirus were reported among more than 49 million gym visits.
Only a few U.S. states have publicly available information on outbreaks linked to the fitness sector, and those states report very few cases.
A study from South Korea published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is often cited as evidence of the inherent hazards of group fitness activities. The study traced 112 coronavirus infections to a Feb. 15 training workshop for fitness dance instructors. Those instructors then taught classes at 12 sports facilities in February and
March, transmitting the virus to students, coworkers and family members. But defenders of the fitness industry point out that the outbreak began before South Korea instituted social distancing measures.
Being indoors raises risk
Infectious disease doctors and public health experts caution that gyms should not downplay their potential for spreading disease, especially if the coronavirus is widespread in the surrounding community.
“There are very few (gyms) that can actually implement all the infection control measures,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist in Phoenix. “That’s really the challenge with gyms: There is so much variety that it makes it hard to put them into a single box.”
Popescu acknowledges there’s not much recent evidence that gyms are major sources of infection but says that should not give people a false sense of security.
“The mistake would be to assume that there is no risk,” she said. “It’s just that a lot of the prevention strategies have been working, and when we start to loosen those, you’re more likely to see clusters occur.”
Any location that brings people together indoors increases the risk of contracting the coronavirus, and breathing heavily adds another element of risk. Interventions such as increasing the distance between cardio machines might help, but tiny infectious airborne particles can travel farther than 6 feet, Popescu said.