Health club protocols changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic

ATLANTA - Can you exercise with strangers safely amid the pandemic? An official with the YMCA of Metro Atlanta believes you can.

Jill Moore, the group vice president, showed FOX 5 the additions and subtractions made to one facility in Buckhead along Moores Mill Road.

If the treadmill is your passion, you will run or walk it with an 8-foot-high patrician on each side of you. There are dozens of them in one of the large rooms.

Partitions divide the treadmills at the YMCA on Moores Mill Road in Buckhead as part of the facilities response to COVID-19. (FOX 5)

Downstairs, on the basketball court, they have chosen to eliminate the early morning pick-up game.

"In basketball, you have to mark ‘check’ people," said Moore. "It puts you into close contact."

All over the facility, members are in masks, but it is discretionary when they are actually using a machine.

And Moore said porters are there every day to clean. The facility shuts down at midday for two hours of deep cleaning. And that procedure is repeated after closing.

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