Astoria's Blink Fitness To Drop Mask Mandate, Open Fully

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Blink Fitness, one of the city’s largest, budget fitness centers with a location in Astoria, is returning to nearly all of its pre-pandemic regulations on Wednesday — following Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to officially lift the state’s mask rules for the fully vaccinated.

Starting May 19, the state is adopting recent CDC guidance that people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus to not wear masks in most indoor spaces — including in Blink Fitness locations, which as of Wednesday will allow vaccinated members to exercise without a mask when they are able to social distance.

Also, instead of reserving a spot at the limited capacity fitness center, members will now have to vie for machines on a first-come, first-served basis at Blink gyms, which will be open at 100 percent capacity at the gym’s reinstated regular hours.

However, some cardio machines will be unavailable for use in order to maintain social distancing, according to the website.

The Department of Health still requires unvaccinated people to wear masks, and “strongly recommends” that everyone wear masks inside in situations where “vaccination status of individuals is unknown.”

In order to adhere to these guidelines, the Blink website notes that non-vaccinated members will still have to wear masks while working out, and that the gym “reserves the right to request proof of vaccination” from people.

It also requests that vaccinated people still wear a mask “when social distancing isn’t possible,” which matches the recommendation from NYC’s health commissioner Dave Chokshi, who said that fully vaccinated New Yorkers should still consider wearing masks in crowded spaces.

Fully vaccinated New Yorkers still have to wear masks on public transportation and inside schools, nursing homes, homeless shelters, health care facilities and correctional facilities, and Chokshi said he’ll continue wearing a mask indoors in many other circumstances, too.

"As a doctor, I have to keep in mind people who are the most vulnerable, people who remain unvaccinated in some cases, because they're not yet eligible for vaccination, such as children as well as people for whom immunity hasn't fully kicked in," he said. "And so what we're saying is until even more people get vaccinated across New York City, it does make sense for us to keep up some of the norms that we've established around masking in those shared indoor spaces."

Read Blink Fitness’ full New York City guidelines here.