Temporary Class Cancellation Through Jan 10 2022
Since re-opening our facility in late June 2021, we’ve required vaccination for all members and staff, and we really appreciate everyone’s commitment to masking in classes as required by the local Board of Health. Members have also been really great about isolation and testing after travel before returning to the gym – and I can’t tell you how proud I am of the heartfelt care that expresses for everyone. As a result, we haven’t had any COVID cases in the facility. We’d like to keep it that way.
As a team we’ve been keeping an eye on the numbers regionally and the numbers are not good. December saw more cases in Somerville than at any time since the start of the pandemic, and our 100th resident has died of COVID.
While we feel good about our protocols at the gym, there is a lot of vax breakthrough happening with the omicron variant and the numbers we see locally and regionally tell us that there is a substantial risk of transmission even amongst vaccinated people. This is not just a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”; Somerville sits at 80% vaccinated and we are still seeing a daily incidence rate above 100 per 100k. The regional wastewater levels are also alarmingly exponential: https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
Despite the lack of leadership from local, state, and federal governments, we take your safety – and the safety of your families – very seriously. I cannot emphasize enough that this should not be left as a personal decision for business owners or parents, but it appears that’s where we’re at now. While the risk of serious illness for vaccinated people from Omicron appears to be low, there’s also still a lot we don’t know about omicron and many of us have children to young to be vaccinated or other high-risk family members. As a team, we’ve decided to take a one week pause to see how the post-holiday numbers develop.
Given the dramatic increase in COVID regionally and locally, we are going to take the measure of cancelling group classes until January 10.
This means Open Gym and Group WOD classes are being removed from the calendar until next Monday, and we won’t be accepting new members until classes re-open. All of our current members are still welcome to use the facility on our clubhouse “One Household At A Time” basis in the “solo WOD time” slots that you can reserve on ZenPlanner. Ventilation is great, and you won’t have to wear a mask when you’re there. If you don’t know how to get into the gym and use it on your own yet, just shoot us an email and we’ll give you the rundown.
We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and appreciate everyone’s support for a cautious and responsible approach. We’ll continue to update ZP with class availabilities, and it looks like we’re past the website difficulties so we’ll be posting updates here as well. In the meantime, please do stay as safe as possible and we hope to see you soon.
-JT, Nelly, Mike, and Karina