Why can’t gyms open yet, but restaurants can?

Melbourne is emerging from lockdown again, but fitness fans may be wondering: why do gyms remain closed for another week while food and drink venues are allowed to open?

It’s true that in most lockdowns around the world, gyms have often been among the last places to reopen. From an infection control perspective, the rationale is that gyms can generally pose some risks that restaurants and coffee shops don’t.

Imagine your gym

Imagine you’re at the gym. It can be a pretty confined space, sometimes with constrained access to fresh air. People are huffing and puffing, ventilation can be needy, and everyone is moving around the room to apply different machines. You could be there for quite a while.

After your workout, you might spend some time in an equally restricted locker room, showering, changing, and getting ready to head back out into the outside world.

Read more: Australia is under pressure to accept that coronavirus can spread through the air we breathe

In this scenario, spending a significant amount of time in such a confined space, surrounded by other people, is associated with an increased risk of contracting COVID-19, which spreads mainly through aerosols and/or droplets.

People who exercise tend to create a lot more aerosols, and it’s not just the exhalation. There’s also a lot inhalation with all that huffing and puffing.

Gyms also often have classes, although of course they can be interrupted. But in general, you don’t want a lot of people in a closed space breathing heavily.

And it’s not just the weight room; gyms have a lot of shared facilities. There are showers, toilets, changing rooms, hair dryers, a lot of shared areas that could pose another risk in terms of people congregating in tiny spaces for long periods of time. And some people spend a lot of time in the changing room, fixing their hair and makeup or shaving.

At first, it was thought that the equipment itself might pose a greater risk, but surface transmission is now probably less of a concern than other transmission routes. So in the case of gyms, it’s not so much about sharing weights as it is about spending time together in an enclosed space.

Read more: Are you going back to the gym? Here’s how you can protect yourself and others from coronavirus infection

Food establishments are generally less at risk

Many food and drink venues also have constrained spaces, but many in Melbourne have been encouraged and have taken up the option of seating people outside or in more ventilated areas. And some can be quite vast.

Sure, many gyms may not be enclosed at all and may have excellent ventilation and outdoor areas. But generally speaking, many do not.

In a hospitality setting, you can ensure that people are sitting in one area and keeping their distance. That’s not possible in a gym; that kind of defeats the purpose. The movement creates an additional risk because it means that if there’s a positive case, they can move around the room and into different parts of the building. They can spread the virus throughout the gym, not just to the next table.

It’s true that we’ve seen transmission in restaurants in this pandemic. So it’s certainly possible that a super-spreader could transmit SARS-CoV-2 to multiple people in a restaurant. But overall, the risk in a restaurant with other control measures is probably lower than in a gym because of all the traffic that’s going on there. A gym has been linked to a vast cluster in Hong Kong.

You can understand why gym owners feel it is not fair and many say they would gladly do anything they could to reduce risk, simply to be able to run their business. One could see how risk could be reduced by moving the weights outside if there was space.

The phased reopening will always aim to return to lower risk venues and activities. Gyms will return, but for now it seems like it will take some time.

Read more: Can you be banned from restaurants, shops and theatres if you don’t have a COVID vaccination certificate?