Exercise debate flexes as lockdown rolls into fifth day

How essential is exercise during the Covid-19 lockdown, do the regulations allow for it to take place and can it be policed?

Villa D’este, Park Drive flats resident Ivor Markman, 70, said because of the lockdown he had halted his daily constitutional which had involved a brisk walk around St George’s Park and nearby Grey school.

“Instead I started doing a walk, on my own, around our block of flats, in our garden.

“But then I was told that we had received an instruction from the authorities that even this was not allowed.

“It seems crazy to me. Exercise is really important during this period, especially since it may be extended.”

Markman said he felt that the authorities needed to clarify what the regulations actually said in this regard and why.

“And regarding walking on the street, how do they differentiate between someone walking to buy food and walking to exercise?

“As long as one maintains social distancing, how can there be a health risk? In return there are so many benefits physically and mentally.”

Writing in The Conversation on Monday, associate professor Benjamin Smart and Institute for the Future of Knowledge director and philosophy professor Alex Broadbent, both at the University of Johannesburg, said some of the lockdown regulations needed urgent review.

“We are not advocating inaction or negligence. Reducing the rate of infection is a laudable goal.

“We would suggest, in particular, the insertion of a right to exercise out of doors, provided physical distance is maintained.”

Smart and Broadbent said that while President Cyril Ramaphosa should be commended for his decisiveness, the regulations needed to be scrutinised and changed if necessary to ensure the country charted its own course for the benefit of the nation and the continent.

“The instruction ‘no jogging, no dog walking, stay inside’ is a public health problem of note: exercise, even a small amount of it, is essential to stay healthy, especially for the elderly, and thus many of those most at risk from Covid-19.

Exercise could alleviate and even prevent depression, they said.

“It is easy to write off the value of mental wellbeing at a time when serious physical disease threatens.

“But this is a mistake. Mental illness has physical consequences for the sufferer and those around them, and can make life seem not worth living.”

When defining “essential goods and services” the question had to be asked, “essential for what”? they noted.

“The current usage of the word ‘essential’ imposes a value judgment. It makes the avoidance of Covid-19 infection the paramount goal.

“It implicitly places less value on mental health, and even physical health where that is independent of Covid-19.”

Asked about the challenging scenario of people walking in the street, national police spokesperson Brigadier Vish Naidoo said the authorities had to rely to a degree on the honesty of the person involved in terms of whether they were acting illegally or not.

“It is based on trust. However, if we establish that a person has lied to the authorities as to what he is doing he or she will be arrested and charged for contravening the regulations of the Disaster Management Act.”

On walking in gated estates or flat-block properties, he confirmed that this was not allowed.

“It is not allowed because the lockdown rule is to maintain social distancing in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19. People living in these complexes are not immune to this virus.”