City Fitness, Les Mills gyms to require proof of Covid-19 vaccination

Two major fitness chains will require members to be vaccinated against Covid-19 when New Zealand moves to the traffic light system on December 3.

Les Mills and City Fitness members will need to be fully vaccinated to enter the gyms under the Covid-19 Protection Framework, or “traffic light system”.

Under the framework’s red and orange settings, gyms that do not use the My Vaccine Pass system to verify users’ vaccination status will not be able to open.

In the green setting, gyms that do not use the passes will be subject to capacity restrictions, similar to alert level 2.

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Les Mills has 12 fitness clubs from Auckland to Dunedin while City Fitness has 41 clubs nationwide.

In an email to members, City Fitness said it was working on a pre-verification process to confirm their vaccination status before the shift to the traffic light system.

The gyms would not store any health information and members could come and go freely once verified.

“While we regret having to exclude anyone from using the facility, our focus is to serve as many members as possible during these times of heightened restrictions,” it said.

“The use of the vaccine pass does allow the clubs to operate with fewer restrictions and reduce the need for booking systems and limits on capacity.”

Those who wanted to keep their membership on hold while the increased restrictions were in place would be able to do so.

Les Mills members will also have to be fully vaccinated from the date the traffic light system goes live in their region.

The gym was looking at how members might be able to upload their My Vaccine Pass to the Les Mills app to verify their vaccination status in advance.

Alternatively, the pass could be presented at the gym entrance on the member’s first visit under the new system.

Unvaccinated members could put their membership on a “special Covid-19 pause” for up to six months, at a cost of $3.50 per week.