I have bought air tickets to visit the Austrian and Italian Alps in Sep 2021. There are swimming pools and thermal baths in this area. I love swimming and enjoy the healing powers of hotspring water. However, given Covid-19, should I refrain from using these facilities? What about natural mountain lakes?
Please let me know what you think.
I think you are OK. Remember the natural mountain lakes will have been snow the week before.
I have recently enjoyed swimming in outdoor pools and thermal baths in Greece and I swim in the sea every day of course. Now I am not a scientist but I think the danger of Covid transmission is through air not water. I do not hesitate to go in outside facilities even if people are not wearing masks although I do keep some distance. I would be reluctant to use a small closed room facility like a sauna or steam room. You have to choose your comfort level.
Swimming isnt inherently dangerous for covid. Just the number of people in close quarters. If it was an indoor thermal bath packed with people i would have concerns. Minimal concerns outdoors. Lots of people in changing areas could be a concern.
I am vaccinated, so no.
You should be safe in the water so long as you socially distance. The issue is more the changing rooms and indoor facilities. You should be ok so long as you wash your hands well, sanitize and maintain a distance from others.
Just because you are vaccinated doesn’t mean you can’t catch Covid.
Being vaccinated makes the risk acceptable to me. As for social distancing, the situation i am sure varies by location; but in the 5 countries I have visited in the last 3 weeks social distancing has been rare in almost every circumstance. If that is something you are counting on, it may be an uncomfortable trip.
If the cases attain a certain level, the decision to use those facilities will be made for you (i.e. they will be closed, just like ski resorts in some regions were closed to prevent another Ischgl). I have swam this summer and last in a local pool but the swim lanes are marked and no one is encouraged to congregate anywhere, or to use the changing rooms. If you just go there, do your swimming at a distance from others, and it's outdoors, I don't suspect it will be a large risk. Not maintaining social distance with a highly transmissable variant (especailly indoors or areas with poor air circulation) is needless trouble, IMHO.
Its not the water that is an issue, its the people around you.
I don't know about Austria or Italy, but in Germany where the number is under 50 thermae are now open with prior reservations.
Whatever you do, stay clear of any Johann or Helga yodelling in the pool. The spit of a yodeller in full throttle can travel up to twelve meters. And no monkey business either, like putting water in your mouth and squirting it between your front teeth at handsome Fritz just to get his attention.
was that funny?
Not to you, Nigel, but I don't aim for mass appeal. Maybe the lips of just one person turned up a little, and that would make my day.
I am a condo association pool chair, so I have an actually talked to the county health department about this, basically the data they provided me pretty much says the risk of exposure and transmission of Covid at Pool’s is pretty slim as long as your social distancing. The water is not going to give you Covid, so I can use the pool pretty much every few days
I'm leaning on the side that outdoor lakes that are not jam packed with beach-goers should be ok.
Kinda concerned about indoor locations. Will likely skip them this time. Too bad. I love thermal baths.
Yes, we have a tour of Iceland in a few days and are going to the Blue Lagoon.
I laughed, Gundersen!
I laughed too!
Me three!
As a person who is highly averse to floating in a pool of other people's dead skin and who-knows-what, I'm no more afraid of catching covid at a pool than I am of that. [shudder]
Thank you, Barbaras, your cheques are on the way.
As my dear Welsh Gran used to say, "Every man thinks he has a sense of humour." I'm just living up to that old maxim.
Gundersen’s wry advice and the current Olympic swimming events taking up most of NBC’s TV broadcasting these days reminds me of U.S. Gold Medalist Mark Spitz. Maybe you never want to be within 3 pool lanes of anybody named Spitz. And he then became a dentist, before vacuum saliva tubes, so there was a lot of spitting going on around him after the Olympics, too.
