Are playgrounds safe now?

[Anonymous]

Our neighbor is a surgeon at the hospital and has a bunch of friends who work with COVID patients. He says playgrounds are fine, the adults just need to stay 6 feet apart.

[Anonymous]

Safe/Not safe is not binary.

The risk of surface transmission is low but not zero. Everyone wears masks and distances, and sanitizes hands before and after, and you choose low traffic times. That's the best way to manage everyone's risk.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t do a really crowded playground, just because I don’t think it would be possible for adults to stay 6’ apart. Otherwise we go pretty often and have since they reopened.

[Anonymous]

Everytime I'm at a playground, I see young kids wiping snot all over the bars. No way am I letting my kids near those things.

[Anonymous]

The equipment is low risk. It's the people you need to be concerned about. I will let my child play on any empty playground, but will not let him play around other people.

[Anonymous]

Here in northern CA they haven’t opened playgrounds even through there’s talk of sending our kids to school soon. I haven’t allowed it since it’s against the rules / I want to demonstrate responsibility but I’d be fine with it if we were the only ones playing. My understanding is studies have shown surface transmission probably is low risk.

[Anonymous]

Agreed with the other comments that playgrounds were never high-risk areas. The initial closures were part knee-jerk reaction, part abundance-of-caution when we were still learning about how the virus spreads.

I take my kids to the playgrounds. I don't attempt to sanitize the equipment- the virus loses viability relatively quickly in the sun, particularly when it is hot and humid. So I just bring them to playgrounds where there aren't any other kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our neighbor is a surgeon at the hospital and has a bunch of friends who work with COVID patients. He says playgrounds are fine, the adults just need to stay 6 feet apart.

+1 a friend is an infectious disease doctor (he has dealt with communicable diseases like Covid). He says playgrounds pose little to no risk for children. He said the same thing, adults stay 6 feet away. Wash kids hands after play. We have gone to the playground several times. We stay away from crowds and give people space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our neighbor is a surgeon at the hospital and has a bunch of friends who work with COVID patients. He says playgrounds are fine, the adults just need to stay 6 feet apart.

Yes this. We have been going a few times per week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would go when no one else is there, and sanitize my kids' hands afterward. Spread from surfaces is not a major source of transmission.

From limited contact tracing we have, we don't see much surface transmission. But kids have been pretty isolated, and adults have been drilled to sanitize their hands and not touch their face.

Once kids start interacting on shared surfaces, we will better understand the real risk. I do think that we won't see the virus living for 3 days on metal in the sun; but on the shady side of the monkey bars? It could definitely last at least a day.

The risk is a weighted combination of how widespread it is in your community (likelihood that an infected kid was ON the playground at all), how soon after you interact with the same equipment for any shaded portions, and the likelihood your kid will touch their face after touching that surface.

Right now, we believe from our somewhat limited testing that it is not widespread, but once it starts increasing than the likelihood that someone touched the equipment right before your kid goes way up.

Then it comes down to if your kid is really good about not touching their face. If they touch surfaces, don't touch face and then sanitize after, it is very low risk.

For me, my kids can't be trusted to not wipe their nose or rub their face while playing, and since we are high risk, we are treating everyone as potentially infected, so the risk combination isn't great for a shared playground.

If you are young parents in good health and not too worried about COVID (you go grocery shopping, get takeout, maybe dine outside at restaurant, have socially distanced meetups with friends), then playgrounds are likely very similar risk, maybe even lower risk than grocery shopping for instance. If everyone is wearing masks at the playground, that would help a great deal -- provided kids aren't fiddling with them all the time which may actually increase risk.

So not an easy answer, but on the spectrum of risk, its not far above other common activities people are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would go when no one else is there, and sanitize my kids' hands afterward. Spread from surfaces is not a major source of transmission.

From limited contact tracing we have, we don't see much surface transmission. But kids have been pretty isolated, and adults have been drilled to sanitize their hands and not touch their face.

Once kids start interacting on shared surfaces, we will better understand the real risk. I do think that we won't see the virus living for 3 days on metal in the sun; but on the shady side of the monkey bars? It could definitely last at least a day.

The risk is a weighted combination of how widespread it is in your community (likelihood that an infected kid was ON the playground at all), how soon after you interact with the same equipment for any shaded portions, and the likelihood your kid will touch their face after touching that surface.

Right now, we believe from our somewhat limited testing that it is not widespread, but once it starts increasing than the likelihood that someone touched the equipment right before your kid goes way up.

Then it comes down to if your kid is really good about not touching their face. If they touch surfaces, don't touch face and then sanitize after, it is very low risk.

For me, my kids can't be trusted to not wipe their nose or rub their face while playing, and since we are high risk, we are treating everyone as potentially infected, so the risk combination isn't great for a shared playground.

If you are young parents in good health and not too worried about COVID (you go grocery shopping, get takeout, maybe dine outside at restaurant, have socially distanced meetups with friends), then playgrounds are likely very similar risk, maybe even lower risk than grocery shopping for instance. If everyone is wearing masks at the playground, that would help a great deal -- provided kids aren't fiddling with them all the time which may actually increase risk.

So not an easy answer, but on the spectrum of risk, its not far above other common activities people are doing.

One more point, I am very skeptical of the low risk of surface transmission, since they CONTINUE to drill in "WASH YOUR HANDS".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it that they weren’t safe 2-3 months ago because coronavirus germs could live for days and now it is ok for kids to play on a playground that is never cleaned?

I took my 3yo to frying pan park last week and saw kids playing on the playground. We only walked around the farm and did not go on the playground. Also went to great country farms a few weeks ago and did not let kids play on equipment or jump on the jumping pillow.

I would like to let my 3yo play on a playground again, maybe early this morning at around 9.

Please tell me that these outdoor high touch play areas are ok even if never cleaned. Ugh. I hate Covid.

OP, these days, you can get anyone to tell you anything you want to hear about Covid. Be careful about what you ask to hear and what you actually believe.

[Anonymous]

Playground safety or lack thereof is the same. What has changed is the ICU capacities. Now, if you kid gives their grandma the covid they got at the playground, the grandma has a good chance of getting an ICU bed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Playground safety or lack thereof is the same. What has changed is the ICU capacities. Now, if you kid gives their grandma the covid they got at the playground, the grandma has a good chance of getting an ICU bed.

To some degree this is true, we have no new knowledge on surface transmission at all

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Playground safety or lack thereof is the same. What has changed is the ICU capacities. Now, if you kid gives their grandma the covid they got at the playground, the grandma has a good chance of getting an ICU bed.

To some degree this is true, we have no new knowledge on surface transmission at all

The safety is the same. Our understanding of it has evolved. We now know that this is airborne primarily and not spread through surface transmission. Kids May have been isolated but adults haven’t, so we know how the virus acts.