Covid-19 strategy regarding gym closures (FOI)

Request

On 2 December 2020 the Government announced a hospitality circuit breaker. At the same time, with no notice, the government also announced the closure of the health and fitness facilities on the Island.

In the Winter strategy, announced in November 2020, the Government committed to taking the approach which caused “least overall harm” and to “ Aim is to contain how and where the virus is being transmitted and, if possible, not to quarantine the Island as a whole“.

To date, 5 December, no evidence has been released to support closing of health and fitness facilities on the Island. There is international evidence to suggest gyms, health and fitness facilities provide essential value to overall wellbeing to the community and should stay open. The UK are keeping gyms open no matter what tier of restrictions locally. With this background in mind, I would like to know the following:

A

Please provide any data / evidence to support the case that there is community transmission in local gyms.

B

Please provide the number of times a local gym has been contacted for track and trace purposes.

C

Please provide the number of “direct contacts” identified by track & trace from local gyms.

D

Please provide the number of “positive” cases that have been identified by track & trace from a local gym.

E

Please provide any evidence or data the government hold that shows the government has considered the “least overall harm” approach when closing local health and fitness facilities.

F

Please provide copies of any emails with any of the following people included in “to” or “cc”: Ivan Muscat, Richard Renouf, John Le Fondre, Steve Pallett, Kevin Pamplin.

Which contain any of these keywords: Gym, gyms, wellness, fitness, wellbeing, weight loss, health facility, health facilities, mental health between the date periods 10 November and 7 December

G

Please provide any evidence or report that the Government of Jersey are committed to health, fitness and wellness of the local community.

Response

A to D

The local cases associated with indoor exercise provision shows one large cluster of 22 cases from one setting (these cases included personal trainers.) The direct contacts from this cluster had a median range of nine with a maximum of 32.

At least a further 20 cases (again including personal trainers / instructors) were identified across six other indoor exercise settings during a likely infectious period.

At the time where the case numbers were rising it was considered likely that some positive cases would continue to use services. Additionally, we know that the 20 to 40 year age group is both a strong demographic in this sector and linked with community spread.

It is the intention of the Public Health Policy team to continue further analysis of local case data in support of understanding where likely risk of viral transmission occurs in support of further development of both guidance and advice to business. As has been the case previously officers will be organising engagement with sector stakeholders in the process of any revised guidance.

Following an extensive review of systems, it has been concluded that the information, as requested, is not held in recorded form. To answer the request in further detail, the data would need to be extracted from various sources and manipulated, aside from taking more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work, the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data in order to provide a response. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

E

The COVID-19 Winter Strategy states that Government will attempt to counter threats on a targeted basis, before putting in place significant island wide, or universal restrictions. Decisions about when to apply targeted or more universal measures are based on the specific infection patterns observed. This targeted approach includes the difficult decision to temporarily close indoor sport and exercise venues, while outdoor sport and exercise and exercising at home remain open and available.

Evidence shows that gyms and other providers of indoor exercise are lower risk when compared to hospitality. However, they are not no risk. To date our COVID-19 strategies have based escalation of measures on evidence as well on local data and intelligence. Prior to closure of gyms and indoor exercise there had been increasing quantitative and qualitative evidence of links to transmission in these areas as well as high use by the 20 to 40 year age group that at the time was also strongly linked to transmission.

F

A search was undertaken on the accounts of Senator John Le Fondre, Deputy Richard Renouf and Ivan Muscat, using the keywords “Gym”, “gyms”, “wellness”, “fitness”, “wellbeing”, “weight loss”, “health facility”, “health facilities”, “mental health” between 10 November and 7 December 2020. The resulting emails are attached and have been redacted where required under Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information Jersey Law 2011

Email correspondence 1 

Email correspondence 2

Email correspondence 3

G

The Government of Jersey are committed to improving the health and wellbeing of Islanders, the Health and Wellbeing Framework can be found in the following link which provides more information.

Health and Wellbeing Framework for Jersey 

Health and the overall wellbeing of islanders remains an important factor during the current pandemic and as part of the Government of Jersey’s response. The Government of Jersey have a specific proactive wellbeing resource page in relation to COVID-19 which includes several health and wellness activities which can be applied regardless of restrictions in place.

Looking after your body and mind 

Articles applied

Article 23: Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for the information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.