What's The Risk Of Getting COVID-19 From Having People Over To Swim?

When it comes to getting sick with COVID-19, you might be thinking about this, and we have too. Holly Peszulik asks:

"If we have a pool or somebody has a pool in their own backyard and you practice good social distancing and have less than 10 people, what are the risks?"

We asked the experts: Dr. Irfan N. Hafiz, an infectious disease physician and chief medical officer for Northwestern Medicine's northwest region; Katie Cary, Vice President of Infection Prevention for HCA Continental Division; and Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, an infectious disease specialist at Nebraska Medicine.

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Their take- Contracting COVID-19 from having people over in a swimming pool is high risk. 

"Probably not ideal to have people over during that time. But if you can do social distancing or if they're coming by themselves and using the pool, maybe that's a way to get around that. But overall, probably not the best idea," Dr. Hafiz said. 

"The biggest thing is just the coming together piece of it. The swimming piece is kind of gravy. You know, like, what you are doing when you're together is where you're concerned," Cary said.

"Most household cleaning agents can kill the virus that causes COVID-19. But the concentrations that would be needed to be able to do that with reference to how much chlorine is in a pool that has not really been studied. And so I would not count on the chlorine in a pool being enough to disinfect any any viruses," Dr. Marcelin said. 

 If you have a question about your risk, send us a video to whatstherisk@newsy.com. You can see answers to other questions here.