27. May
First, and most importantly, we want to send our thoughts and well wishes to everyone. We hope you have been Covid free and have survived the quarantine with love and happiness. All of our teachers are healthy and eager to come back to what they do best. While, like all small businesses in New York City we have been hit very hard financially by this pandemic, our priority has been and will continue to be, the health and safety of our teachers, clients and community.
We miss everyone and the daily routines of the studios. We have remained in contact with the wonderful teaching team, some of whom continue to offer Livestream sessions from their living rooms. We are pleased to let you know that all the teachers intend to return to work for Avea Pilates.
We appreciate all the love and support we have received over the last couple of months from many of you. Our plan is to reopen when we are allowed to do so by appropriate government agencies. We will open with standards that that would make US feel comfortable and safe coming to the studio for a group class. This is especially important considering our owner, Carrie, has been living with Multiple Sclerosis for 20 years and being exposed to the virus could make her very ill.
When the studios do reopen, we will have in place enhanced cleaning procedures including extra deep cleaning, fresh towels that will be replaced between each class, hand sanitizer for both clients and teachers, disposable wipes and more. We will also replace the hand/foot straps with new vinyl straps that are easier to sanitize between classes.
In addition to these extra steps we will have revised client policies for the safety of you, your fellow participants in class and the teachers. We will be limiting class sizes (likely to 50%) until it is safe to increase capacity, and will have staggered class start times to help ensure social distancing can be maintained. All classes will run as Express classes (45 minutes) so that we will have 15 minutes between classes to sanitize studio surfaces before the next class. Please note that there is no foolproof way of determining a Covid-19 case, so we will be asking for your cooperation in keeping everyone safe.
In good news, as the world has started to recover from this pandemic, there is great evidence that both Pilates and shared spaces are safer than originally thought. Pilates and Yoga safer forms of exercise and CDC Clarifies that the primary means of infection is through respiratory droplets from an infected person who coughs, sneezes or talks in close proximity to someone else, rather than surface contamination.
We look forward to being in touch and seeing you all again soon.