7 KEY QUESTIONS FOR SUMMER

Summer during a pandemic brings new questions about what’s safe and how to best protect ourselves.

Is it OK to go to a public pool? Stay in a hotel? Send a kid to camp?

The Washington Post asked three public health experts what they and their families will — and won’t — do this summer, and what precautions they will take.

1. What, in general, will you consider when deciding where to go and what to do?

The experts say they will continue to limit contact with anyone outside their households and keep any gatherings small.

“I won’t expand my sphere too much,” said Richard Jackson, a pediatrician and professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Marybeth Sexton, an assistant professor at the Emory University

School of Medicine, said she is aware that risks are increasing as more people venture out.

“I’ll really try to keep anything I do small and outdoors as much as possible — and with people who will be wearing a mask,” Sexton said.

Julie Fischer, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University, said her family will remain extra vigilant so they can feel safer visiting grandparents later.

“I’ll be thinking about how much I’m in contact with other people,” Fischer said,“particularly people whose risk background we don’t know about.”

2. Would you go to a public pool?

Two of the three experts said

they would consider going.The pool itself is relatively low-risk because chlorine generally kills viruses, they said. It’s all the other activity in and around a pool that is worrisome.

For those who do go, Sexton recommends bringing their own drinks and food to avoid water fountains and snack bars, as well as hand sanitizer to use after touching common areas.

3. Would you go to the beach?

All three said they would because being outdoors is relatively low-risk. “I’d 100 percent go to a beach and enjoy it,”Fischer said.“But if

we get there and see acrowd, we’ll simply turn around” and leave.

Jackson said he’d “absolutely” go, but only with people in his household.“I’d stay on my blanket and not be around a lot of people,” he said.

4. Would you travel by plane?

All three say they would avoid it, if possible.

5. Would you stay in a hotel?

All three said yes, but they would increase their comfort by bringing disinfectant to wipe down commontouch surfaces in their rooms, such as doorknobs, bathroom faucets

and the TV remote.

6. Would you send a child to day camp?

All three said parents need to weigh their need for child care against their child’s additional risk of exposure at camps.

“I’d have to acknowledge I was taking a risk and assume we’d have to not expose other people,”Fischer said.

If she needed the child care, Sexton said, she would ask the camp director about how staff and campers would be screened and how a sick child or staffer would be handled. She said she’d also check for hand-washing facilities and whether campers and staff would wear masks, even outdoors.

7. Would you allow your child to play team sports?

It depends. Children on opposite sides of the tennis court or in their own lap lanes would be safer than those on the soccer field or basketball court.

Sexton said her decision would depend on the sport, but“I’d lean toward ‘no’” because of the potential for close contact and shared equipment.

“I think that’s going to have to be done very carefully,”Sexton said.