Watching the heavy rain from inside her car, Barbara Young considered going back home. Ms. Young, 52, had arrived at Fisher Pool in East Elmhurst, Queens, at 9:30 a.m. — an hour and a half before the pool had been scheduled to reopen for the summer — just to be one of the first people inside. The downpour looked ominous.
But Ms. Young decided to sit tight. Fifteen minutes before the scheduled reopening, the rain stopped. Soon, she and her goddaughter’s daughter were cooling off in the water.
“I missed you, pool,” Ms. Young’s 7-year-old goddaughter’s daughter said as she paddled.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic and city budget cuts, eight outdoor pools across New York City’s five boroughs opened on Friday, and seven more were set to open next Saturday.
In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a dozen people waited in line for Sunset Pool to open its doors at 11 a.m. The rain pushed it back to 1 p.m.
Christopher Lopez, 16, waited anxiously for more than four hours to swim with his two friends.
The first public pools in the city were built more than 80 years ago and had never missed a season since. But this year, it was a close call.
In April, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that outdoor public pools would stay closed for the summer in an effort to save money in the budget. In June, though, the mayor reversed that decision, providing nearly $10 million to the Department of Parks and Recreation to reinstate 15 of the 53 outdoor city pools.
“This is going to be wonderful for neighborhood residents, particularly young people,” Mr. de Blasio said during a news conference on Thursday. “Especially as it’s gotten so hot.”
Public swimming pools are the latest in a series of outdoor activities that the city has greenlighted, giving a glimmer of bliss to what many New Yorkers expect will be a bleak summer.
Playgrounds and beaches, closed earlier in the year because of the pandemic, were reopened several weeks ago. Basketball and tennis courts soon followed.
- Pelosi again rules out a short extension of $600 unemployment benefits, pushing for broader aid.
- A new C.D.C. statement on schools calls for reopening and downplays the potential health risks.
- A number of virus clusters in the U.S. have been traced to school-related events or gatherings of teenagers.
At Sunset Pool, swimmers left their masks on top of beach towels as they took a dip. The air smelled of chlorine and sunscreen. Just as lifeguards were watching for swimmers in distress, city workers were keeping an eye on social-distancing measures.
Jhoana Gonzalez, 33, a nanny from Sunset Park, floated in the water. “I feel very happy, relaxed,” she said.
Ms. Gonzalez moved to the neighborhood last year, partly to be closer to the pool. Although she heard earlier this year that pools would not open, she checked online daily for better news.
Outdoor pools are woven into the fabric of the city; 11 pools were opened within weeks of one another in the summer of 1936, when Robert Moses was parks commissioner. At the time, New York’s network of swimming pools was considered the largest and most advanced public-cooling infrastructure in the country, lauded for its filtration system and architectural styles.
“It’s one of our great New York City traditions,” Mitchell J. Silver, the city’s parks commissioner, said.
The free-of-charge swimming pools have historically served low-income families in need of relief under the summer sun. But in recent years, city pools have attracted New Yorkers from all backgrounds as a result of renovations and a variety of swimming lessons.
Jimmy Ren, 35, almost forgot to take off his face mask before making a cannonball jump into Sunset Pool.
So, he removed his mask, gently placed it on top of his flip-flops and then — splash.
His 4-year-old son, Steven, was more hesitant. He had learned how to swim a year ago at Sunset Pool, but couldn’t seem to make the leap on Friday. After a little convincing, he slid into the water and the two laughed and played.
Beaches are also open for swimming, but Mr. Ren says he feels safer at the pool.
“I go to the beach and it’s more crowded there, so what’s the point?” he said.
Although research shows a lower risk of transmitting the coronavirus outdoors compared with indoors, New Yorkers remain cautious. As the city sees record-low infections, reports of surging cases and rollbacks of reopening in states like Texas, Florida and California are worrying some residents.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 23, 2020
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
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What’s the best material for a mask?
- Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
Mr. de Blasio’s change of heart in late June led the Parks Department to fast-track the reopening process from what normally takes three months to five weeks, Mr. Silver said.
Within weeks, the department devised an elaborate plan for the pools, including a wristband system and social-distancing ambassadors.
The selected recreation centers are operating at a 70 percent capacity. If the pool is full, visitors can receive paper wristbands that allow them to return later that day.
Inside the center, attendees must wear face coverings at all times, except in the water. Social-distancing ambassadors are stationed at locker rooms and poolside to watch out for overcrowding, as they also do at beaches. Swimmers are expected to keep six feet away from others while in the pool.
The city’s budget had room for 15 of the 53 public pools to reopen this summer. A range of factors was considered to choose the locations, including the condition of the pools, capacity and the impact of the virus on neighborhoods.
Louie Virella, 52, the Queens borough chief lifeguard, supervised Fisher Pool on Friday morning. He wasn’t surprised to see a line of people waiting before the pool opened.
“This community, they love this pool,” Mr. Virella said. “If you live in the area, just bring your towel and a mask and jump right in.”
Though the coronavirus has derailed many summer plans, Mr. Silver expected that the pools now open would remain that way for the rest of the season: “It is my hope with all the rules in place, we’ll be able to keep the pools open until September 7.”
City pools are often crowded, but because of the reduced capacity on Friday bathers had plenty of space to make wide laps and big splashes without bothering others.
“I hope it’s like this for the rest of the summer,” Ms. Young, the Fisher Pool visitor, said. “I feel safe.”
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‘I Missed You, Pool’: Children Rejoice as N.Y.C. Public Pools Finally Open - The New York Times
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