With the Delhi government announcing to reopen gyms from February 7 after a consistent dip in COVID-19 cases in the national capital, the gym owners rejoiced and are hoping to revive their business.
The gym business has registered a major slump during the Covid pandemic.
Amid a decline in daily COVID-19 cases in the city, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Friday decided to allow the reopening of gyms with certain restrictions.
Welcoming the decision of the government, Vice-President of Delhi Gym Association, Chirag Sethi said that it will help "five lakh families" who thrive on this business.
"It is a very positive decision. We welcome this decision. This decision has brought relief to 5 lakh people who are associated with gyms. For almost 40 days, the gym were closed. Now that gyms are being reopened, people associated with them are in relief thinking that their life will be back on the track."
Assuring to follow all COVID protocols, he said, "We have asked all the gyms to follow Health Ministry guidelines. We also asked them to follow COVID appropriate behaviour. Double vaccination is a must. For people who are not vaccinated, we have asked gym owners to ask them to have vaccination and provide them discounts or extensions so that more people are vaccinated and the covid infection is less."
Sadhvi, Gym owner of anytime fitness said, "We are very grateful to the Delhi government and the DDMA guidelines. The profession gets livelihood to 5 lakh people. We have taken all the measures we can take. We make sure that the team is fully vaccinated including the coaches. Plus, we make sure the clients who come to the gym are fully vaccinated. We have a slot system here. So, the clients are supposed to fix their slot before coming to the gym. There are sanitisation stations all over the gym and the gym is completely sanitised after every 2 hours. So that no two people same equipment with their hands. We have installed equipment which will sense the temperature of people coming. So, once the temperature is above 99 F, we make sure their entry is restricted to the gym."
Zubair Ahmed, gym owner at GravitaZ Gym said, "I would like to thank the Delhi government they have given us a chance to reopen the gyms after so long. We have always abided by the guidelines given to us. We are going to follow the guidelines in future as well and we hope that the Delhi government will support us. We will just give entry to members who are fully vaccinated. This is what we have done earlier and the same thing we will be doing this time as well. Regular sanitisation will take place. We will be giving timings to people on the basis of slots. 15-20 members will be working out at once."
The dip in COVID-19 cases in Delhi continued as 2,272 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Friday, with the positivity rate dipping to 3.85 per cent.
( With inputs from ANI )
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