California has released guidelines for fitness facilities, including pools, to begin reopening by Friday on a county-by-county basis.
The LA Times reports that California officials announced last Friday that counties could begin reopening gyms, based on local conditions. Those reopenings could begin as early as this Friday, June 12. Other businesses that can reopen: day camps, bars, and some professional sports.
The state has released some industry-specific guidelines to help prepare for the reopening, though not all counties will be able to reopen immediately. You can see all the fitness facility guidelines here.
There’s very little in the way of specifics in this particular set of guidelines. Each fitness facility will have to establish its own COVID-19 prevention plan and rely on local health authorities for more specifics. Here are some of the points mentioned in the guidelines:
- Employees must be screened for temperature and/or COVID-19 symptoms at the beginning of their shift.
- Face coverings for all employees are strongly recommended.
- So are reservation systems, to help limit how many people are in a facility at a time.
- There’s no set maximum for occupancy. Many states have settled on 25% or 50% occupancy in the early stages of reopening, but California merely says that facilities should “evaluate maximum occupancy rules based on the size of the facility” to allow social distancing.
- For pools specifically, California points to the CDC’s overall guidelines, while recommending social distancing and the circulating of outside air into the facility.
- Of particular note to swim teams will be one bullet point near the end:
- “Aquatic venues should avoid activities that promote group gatherings and should be aware of local policies on gathering requirements to determine if aquatic fitness classes, swim lessons, swim team practices, swim meets, or pool parties can be held.”
You can see California’s county-by-county reopening map here, on the state COVID-19 website.
I’ll be honest I’m more interested in reading about the guidelines for bars than I am for fitness centers or pools. We want our bars back! Who’s with me! Upvote!!! Let’s start a revolution! We want bars! We want bars!!!
Our local pub had take out . Ppl could bring a bottle & have it filled with beer . I kinda liked it as normally I wouldn’t go inside & beer from the tap is better than a can . I don’t drink alcohol much but I liked walking home with a large coke bottle of beer. Good times.
If you are a California swimmer or the parent of a California swimmer and you live in a county that has not yet reopened its pools (most of them), please consider sending a thoughtful email or letter to your county supervisor and local department of health asking them to reopen pools with social distancing plans in place on June 12. There are lots of great plans out there, including the San Diego plan (https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/deh/fhd/pool.html). Help your decisionmakers see that regulated lap swimming including supervised swim team practices is a low-risk activity that should be permitted now. Your Cali swim community will thank you!
OC is leading the rest of the counties with pool openings and teams resuming. Unfortunately, it seems like most government leaders can’t distinguish between a structured swim environment versus that pool party scene from the movie Wolf Of Wall Street. Hopefully the best practices that the OC teams are putting in place will give the other counties an idea of how it can work safely. I have sent messages to our government leaders at all state, county, city levels. It’s actually become surprising to get a response, because 99% of the time there is no response.
It’s about time! Our kids need to be able to play sports and swimming and water polo are the safer than just about any other sports. The virus dies in pools.
So my question is: If the second wave doesn’t appear, and most of the nation is reopened by august, are the Cali universities going to remain closed in the fall?
That’s a good question, and it’s not one that they’ve answered. I would imagine logistically that if you’re not planning to have that many people back on a campus in the fall, that it would be hard to scramble last minute and make it happen. That being said, maybe they can move some small things back to campus and, among others, figure out a way to make it work for the student-athletes.
Stanford just announced for 2020-21 academic year that undergraduates will only be on campus for 2 of the 4 quarters (with one quarter off-campus doing tele-courses). Incoming frosh will get to be on campus fall quarter, and seniors will be guaranteed a spring quarter on-campus slot. I don’t know how this applies to the athletes. Should be some interesting workarounds.
I believe it was only the Cal State school system that said they were not opening for on campus classes this Fall. This would be San Diego State, Fresno State, Long Beach State etc. UC or private schools have not made any announcements.