How to hike and maintain social distance (non-thruhiking oriented)

[SkeeterPee]

From the CDC website:
"The virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in the feces of some patients diagnosed with COVID-19. However, it is unclear whether the virus found in feces may be capable of causing COVID-19. There has not been any confirmed report of the virus spreading from feces to a person. Scientists also do not know how much risk there is that the virus could be spread from the feces of an infected person to another person. However, they think this risk is low based on data from previous outbreaks of diseases caused by related coronaviruses, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)."

I read that public health departments are monitoring sewage for the virus as a way to determine virus levels in the population.

I have read the same. As long a you wash your hands with soap/water or use sanitizer I think you are OK. For Noro you need to use soap so I would plan to use both.

[Sunburn]

Hopefully this is a valid question for this thread.

Some of the privies are closed on the AT, not sure about other trails or if all privies are closed. Does anyone know of the reason for this? And now months later are those concerns still valid? Is it an issues with no maintenance of the privy or a social distance concern. If social distance, does that mean all public restrooms are unsafe

Yes, when they decided to request people get off the trails, they decided to close privies because they were not going to be maintained nor were the shelters going to be maintained because they did not want to expose those individuals to the virus in addition to the fact that they could spread the virus to hikers.

As for public restrooms, obviously there is some risk there but you have soap and water and can avoid touching the door handle if you of a mind to so you can control your risk somewhat but public restrooms are obviously a little higher risk at all times. They did not close the privies due to an extraordinary risk. It was more of a precaution.

Keep in mind, when they made that decision it was completely unknown how virulent the virus might be. It now known the virus is not nearly as deadly as it potentially could have been but is also known to be more contagious than at first thought.