Despite growing fears of an H1N1 outbreak, local health experts say Centretown gym-goers can stop worrying about being infected by a sweaty Stairmaster.
“What we’ve been mixing up is to suggest that you can catch influenza from touching a doorknob that somebody else has touched,” says Dr. Gerald Evans, associate professor of medicine at Queens University. “That’s actually the way you catch a cold, which is a completely different virus.”
Health clubs are hot beds of biological activity, full of people sharing equipment, saunas, showers, and locker rooms. Some are carrying contagious viral or bacterial diseases.
But a fitness facility is not a breeding ground for a case of swine flu, Dr. Evans says.
“We transmit these viruses wherever people gather in large numbers for long periods of time, not in recreational facilities where people come and go.”
H1N1 is transmitted person-to-person, says Dr. Earl Brown, executive director of the Emerging Pathogens Research Centre at the University of Ottawa.
Influenza is passed through air, he says, so keeping at least a metre apart from someone who may be infected with the virus while at the gym is a safe distance.
The 20, 000 people living in the Centretown district are more likely to catch the flu on public transit that they are in the gym.
Furthermore, physically active people who are reasonably healthy are not at high risk of contracting H1N1 swine flu, Dr. Brown says, and the vast majority of people who do, only experience very mild influenza symptoms.
Contracting the flu by touching an inanimate object is rare. But, sanitizing the equipment is a necessary precaution for Nancy Jodoin, member of the Jack Purcell Community Centre weight room.
“I don’t want to catch anything and I don’t want to pass anything on to anybody else,” Jodoin says. “I always wipe down the machines…although I don’t really know how effective the spray is.”
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers and spray bottles are provided at the gym. These help protect people against cold-causing viruses–but not swine flu, Dr. Evans says.
He adds that an outbreak would not be a reason for shutting down a gym.“Just because someone with the flu uses the recreational facility, it is not the facility that is now infectious,” he says. “It is still people who are infectious.”