Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
In the era of COVID-19, is the gym dangerous to your health?
Between the heavy breathing and sweaty bodies, gyms are a perfect place for the coronavirus to thrive.
Dozens in South Florida have been singled out for ignoring precautions that are necessary to stop the virus from spreading, and one gym owner who said he would not enforce a mask requirement has now been arrested three times for it.
Some research suggests that following strict antivirus protocols at gyms might actually make them pretty safe. But assessing how much gyms have contributed to the pandemic is impossible because the state has devoted too few resources to tracking where people got the disease.
“I’ve gone to the gym for years,” said Robert Bayard, a 26-year-old West Palm Beach resident. “I’ve done it for so long that it’s just like brushing your teeth.”
Bayard acknowledged the risk he takes just to work out as he walked through the parking lot to Rock Fitness gym in Palm Beach County, headphones plugged into his ears and a KN95 mask covering his mouth.
“It definitely is a place that you can contract it,” Bayard
said of the virus. “That’s why you have to take extreme caution to be here, just like anywhere else.”
“It’s a number’s game,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University. “How close do people get, how much virus are they exhaling … and [what are] the odds that someone who has the virus is going to be at the gym.”
Dozens of complaints
Even if the odds are low, a number of cases have been traced to gyms.
Health officials from Mi
ami-Dade county confirmed Wednesday that some people infected with the virus identified gyms there as their possible site of exposure, but officials did not disclose how many people had been exposed, when they had been exposed or which gyms were possible transmission sites.
A Broward County Health Department spokeswoman said no COVID-19 cases have been associated with gyms in Broward.
Many people worry about gyms anyway. The public had made 87 complaints about gyms and fitness centers in Broward as of Friday, but only three of those resulted in citations. The rest brought warnings, according to data provided by the county.
Gyms represented a tiny share of the 7,420 complaints filed countywide, with nearly 5,000 of them unsubstantiated.
Most gym complaints mentioned not following the county’s mask rules in some way. Some questioned the gyms for not enforcing proper social distancing. Two complaints mentioned people coughing.
Michael Carnevale, owner of Fitness 1440, operates one of the gyms cited. He was arrested after a customer exercised without a mask in his gym. Carnevale also filed a lawsuit against the county before his arrest, claiming the mask rule is unconstitutional.
“It’s not possible. It’s just not possible,” Carnevale said of enforcing the county’s mask requirement. “I have 18,000 square feet of gym space. How could I possibly make sure that everyone in the facility is wearing a mask? And I don’t think it’s safe to do that.”
As of Friday, Carnevale has now been arrested three times for not following the county’s emergency order, a spokeswoman with the Plantation Police Department confirmed. Fitness 1440 will be closed for at least four days.
In Miami-Dade, 35 gyms and fitness centers have been inspected. Nine were warned, two were closed, and four were cited, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department.
According to data from Miami Police, officers checked 10 gyms from early July through early August, but all were found to comply with the orders.
In Palm Beach County, people filed a total of 236 complaints to code enforcement about gyms and fitness centers from late June to Friday. But only one warning was issued, according to a list of complaints provided by the county Thursday.
Lack of local data
One reason for scant evidence about gyms is that there isn’t enough effective contact tracing in South Florida to determine whether safety protocols are working.
Contact tracers are tasked with calling people who have tested positive for the virus, ensuring they isolate or quarantine and finding any others who may have been in contact with the positive person to advise them to be tested and isolate.
Broward County Mayor Dale Holness said the Department of Health in his county has had difficulty identifying where people are catching the virus. Officials know that about 60% to 80% of infections over the last few weeks have spread within families, Holness said. But how COVID-19 entered the homes is generally unclear.
“Where they initially got it, again, is a little bit difficult,” Holness said.
Broward County has 353 contact tracers, according to the Broward County Health Department. No COVID-19 cases have been traced back to gyms in the county, Candy Sims, Broward Department of Health spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
Miami-Dade has 383 contact tracers and plans to hire a total of 550 in coming weeks; The county appears to have a similar problem tracing the origin of the virus.
“The contact tracing up to now has been a failure and very frustrating,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said Wednesday.
In a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis dated July 27, Gelber said Miami-Dade’s contact tracing effort is ill-equipped to keep up with the spreading pandemic and pleaded for expanded and improved contact tracing.
According to Gelber’s letter, contact tracers were able to connect with only 17% of those infected on July 11.
“That means over 80% of those infected were never reached and have never been advised where or how to isolate,” Gelber wrote.
Taking precautions
Scientific research from Norway and South Korea shows that the risk of contracting the disease at the gym is significant, but the data also show that stringent safety protocols may be highly effective at reducing its spread.
In South Korea, researchers were able to establish that over 112 people in one city caught the virus from 12 separate sports facilities over a period of 24 days in February and March. According to the research letter, all the infections originated from a single source: “a nationwide fitness dance instructor workshop that was held on February 15,” where participants did not take strict anti-virus precautions.
In Norway, researchers tracked some 2,000 gym-goers in May and June who worked out in facilities that did follow strict anti-virus protocols. The researchers found that no study participants contracted the virus at the gym.
County orders have forced gyms across South Florida to institute a series of protective measures designed to stop the spread of COVID-19.
When Bayard returned to the gym in Palm Beach County after lockdowns ended, he found his workout experience radically changed. Social distancing was routine. So were limited building capacity and a requirement that masks be worn except when exercising.
Miami-Dade and Broward County have instituted more stringent safety measures than Palm Beach County. They make gym-goers wear masks at all times, even when working out, and they require temperature checks when entering the building.
Clayton Flotz, owner of Powerhouse Gym Fort Lauderdale, said his gym takes the temperature of each member, uses a touchless check-in system and has increased its maintenance staff by 50%.
In a 22,000-square-foot gym, Flotz said he spaced every machine 10 feet apart and group classes are still being offered, but the 50% occupancy limit is in effect for them, too.
All three counties have required gyms to upgrade their ventilation systems and wipe down equipment regularly.
Lisa De La Rionda, a public affairs director for Palm Beach County, defended Palm Beach County’s lack of a mask requirement for gym-goers during exercise because “people who are engaged in high intensity activities may have difficulty breathing while wearing a facial covering.” In order to take off their mask, gym-goers must be able to social distance from others in the gym, she wrote in an email.
Though Palm Beach County is still part of the epicenter of COVID-19 cases in Florida, its cases lag behind Broward’s and Miami-Dade’s. So for now, County Adminstrator Verdenia Baker said, Palm Beach County is not making major changes to the rules.
The cost of complying
Even though the restrictions increase operating costs, most gyms appear to be vigorously enforcing new rules to contain the virus.
Jason Neil, owner of Rock Fitness in West Palm Beach and Riviera Beach, is one who says keeping up with the county’s orders has been a “nightmare” for his business.
He said he spends about $10,000 a month on an outside cleaning company that cleans the gym nightly. Rock Fitness hired an extra employee whose job is dedicated to cleaning, and members are required to wear masks inside the building but can take them off when exercising.
But not everyone feels comfortable coming back. Neil said his membership has declined by about 20% since May. In the first two weeks of July, 75 of 1,700 members canceled, with the coronavirus being the main reason.
Gym owners are frustrated, Neil said, as ensuring each person is following the rules is difficult to monitor. Asking customers to wear their masks is a daily issue, and Neil said he has had to kick a member out for not following the mask rule.
“You just can’t babysit everybody,” Neil said. “You can’t.
Even the most stringent precautions have not been enough to entice many avid gym-goers back through the door.
Maria Cristina Chicuen, a 25-year-old Miami Beach resident, said she put her membership on hold in early March and has no plan to return until there is a vaccine. Instead of group classes at the YMCA, she relies on outdoor walks and YouTube exercise routines.
“I just don’t want to put myself in a scary situation,” Chicuen said. “I feel terrible for gyms. If they had the right amount of people who could be constantly wiping down, maybe I would be a little more comfortable. It’s just not for me until there’s a vaccine and [it is] further along in a post-pandemic world.”
Quinn Smith, a 38-year-old Miami resident who went to gyms until they shut down, said the nature of crowds at gyms, with heavy breathing and people lingering on machines, was what led him to stop going in mid-March.
“Just wearing a mask isn’t good enough if you’re going to be in an environment with a lot of people,” Smith said.
The unknowns about the virus and how it spreads keep him from going back, Smith said.
“Zero chance. I’m not going to take a chance through working out. I can work out at home,” Smith said.