Fitness industry pleads with government to allow gyms to run at full capacity

Fitness industry pleads with government to allow gyms to run at full capacity

The health and fitness industry is asking the government to allow gyms to run at full capacity again. 

Gym
pexels

50 people are allowed to be in a gym or fitness centre, at any given time. Smaller venues can operate at 50% capacity. 

FitSA, which represents gyms in the country, wants the government to re-evaluate the decision. 

ALSO READ: A further decline in new COVID-19 cases for SA

The organisation's Grant Austin feels they should be treated as an essential service, "Some of the bigger branches are having queues of up to 150 people outside and statistics both locally and internationally have shown that gyms are safe places." 

Austin said according to the disaster management in the Garden Route, the transmission rate in the gyms is 1% whereas shopping malls have double that. 

"You don't limit a shopping mall to the number of people that come in so we feel we should be able to run at a capacity that our gyms can run at or accommodate social distancing." 

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