As summer heats up, here's what you need to know about cooling off amid coronavirus
As states begin to loosen restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many are wondering what warm-weather activities we can safely return to. Visiting a shared pool, for now, isn't likely one of them.You'll get the latest updates on this topic in your browser notifications.
"Public pools are an open question," says Dr. Robert A. Norton, a professor of Public Health at Auburn University and a member of several coronavirus task forces. "Chlorination will neutralize the virus — with that I am confident," he says, but it's the environment around the pool that is a bigger danger to visitors' health. "The real problem now is the issue of crowding. Crowds need to be avoided." Stringent cleaning measures will need to be upheld to have any hope of keeping swimmers safe, something Norton doesn't see happening in many places.
Scientists also don't yet know everything about how the novel coronavirus behaves in water. "There have been lots of problems with public pools in the past, with other types of water-borne pathogens," says Norton. "For now, I would recommend not going that route, at least until we have a better handle on the dynamics of the environmental survival of the virus." Environmental survival refers to how it fares in water versus on surfaces or in the air.
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