What outdoor activities are safe right now?

July 16, 2020 8:22 PM

I'm trying to assess the risk of different outdoor activities now and would love some thoughts and guidelines on what can safely be done in my local area and what is still too risky due to Covid-19. As a household we've been pretty locked down, but we've been talking about a few outdoor items and are trying to figure out how to assess risk, and guidelines if things are safe enough to attempt.

Is it safe to do things from tennis, to golf, kayaking, to hiking 10 feet apart with a friend? Mask wearing would be key, but does the potential for deep breathing plus you might be moving in the same direction as someone's exhalation cloud matter or make it that much less safe?

I've tried doing some of my own research but it seems to either be anecdotal (oh it's fine) or meant more for very solo activities. I can't really seem to find much that addresses the risk of doing things with a small group so war curious to get more information.

We're not currently thinking of doing stuff in large groups or even outdoors while remaining in place, but I know it would be nice to get outdoors with others. I really want us to be safe and facts would help overcome the emotional response given that we haven't seen anyone we know in person since March, it can feel scary in a way that I wasn't anticipating.

posted by Carillon to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

Of the activities you mentioned, I would think tennis (singles) would be the safest. You are a good ways away from your opponent.
posted by NotLost at 9:29 PM on July 16, 2020

Melbourne in Victoria is currently subject to an outbreak, and the State Government there has issued recommendations about outside exercise—the ABC has a summary of them. Golf solo or in pairs (but well separated from other pairs), hiking (but not if you're making day trips to remote locations), and so on.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:40 PM on July 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’ve seen a few infographics that are helpful to assess risk with different factors. Tennis seems to be at the low end in many of them.
posted by eyeball at 10:41 PM on July 16, 2020

Part of this depends where you are and how high the infection rate is in your locality. FWIW, in Scotland, the first phase of moving away from lockdown towards reintroducing physical activity included golf, tennis and fishing, with social distancing measures in place.

I work for an organisation focused on running groups so this stuff I know in more detail, based on guidance from the Scottish Government and the national institute of sports scientists: During the height of lockdown, you could leave your house once a day for outdoor exercise, only with people from your own household. It had to start and finish at your home (no travelling to exercise).

The first stage of emerging from lockdown allowed people to meet for outdoor exercise with someone from one other household. They had to stay 2m apart if running side-by-side and 5m apart if running single file. No masks needed.

Then it basically moved progressively up, adding a household to the maximum group size every few weeks. We're now at the stage you can run with people from your own household and 4 other households per day. The same distance restrictions still apply, and there's to be no touching shared surfaces, no sharing bottles or passing snacks. But we currently have zero covid deaths most days and relatively low rates of new infection. YMMV depending on rates where you are.
posted by penguin pie at 2:51 AM on July 17, 2020

I'm involved in running an archery club here in the UK. Our national body set out guidelines for resuming activities in June, and we finally started our club back up two weeks ago.

We did a risk assessment and wrote some pretty strict guidelines for members, and it's been going OK. We're insisting on a 2m distance between participants, and there's no sharing of equipment except where people cohabit. The procedures minimise the chance of people coming into close proximity or touching the same piece of equipment.

Fortunately ours is a sport where it's fairly easy to stay apart. Whether the activities you mentioned would be safe for you will depend on how well planned they are, and what the prevalence of the virus is where you live. In my particular corner of the UK, recorded cases have fallen to such a low level (for now) that many 'normal' activities can be carried out if you take reasonable precautions.
posted by pipeski at 3:52 AM on July 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

The activities you describe generally sound low risk to me, especially if the participants are diligent about wearing masks. One point of reference you might consider is the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Studies on the protests have shown that they have not led to a spike in community transmission, and that protesters tested positive for Covid-19 at about the same rate as the general population (if not a lower rate in some cases.) These are events where participants have been talking and yelling near each other in large groups without maintaining a social distance of 6 feet. But because they take place outdoors and participants are almost all wearing masks, the risk has remained low. The recreations you mention, especially with the precautions you plan to take, would seem to be low risk given our current understanding of virus transmission.

This is with the caveat that if you are in a community with very high transmission rates, if you have medical issues that make you high risk or contact with those who do, or if local restrictions discourage this activity, you should of course take those factors into account in your risk assessment.
posted by rabbitbookworm at 6:59 AM on July 17, 2020 [2 favorites]