A gym in Redondo Beach, California, takes extreme measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission. A study in Norway suggests even with less stringent distancing, working out at the gym may be safe.
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Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Wondering whether it’s safe to go back to the gym? Norwegian gymgoers may have some good news for you. A study on the risk of coronavirus transmission in Oslo found that people who went to a gym were no more likely to get infected, or sick, than people who didn’t. Norway has reopened its gyms based on the tentative results, which were published as a preprint yesterday and still need to go through peer review.
But some epidemiologists aren’t so sure. It’s possible that no one was infected at those Oslo gyms because there were very few COVID-19 cases in the city when the study was done—not because working up a sweat on the treadmill or lifting weights in the midst of a pandemic is safe.
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