Background and objective:
During COVID19 outbreak, many governments worldwide shutdown public places including gyms, schools, universities, colleges, workplaces, and malls. These COVID19-induced procedures limited participating in physical and social activities immensely. In Qatar, however, the government allowed outdoor physical activities only with family members. The effect of such “lenient” COVID19 confinement procedures on physical and social activities is not known. Therefore, the current study examined the association between changes in physical activity and social relationships during COVID19 lockout in Qatar.

Methods:
The changes in physical and sedentary activities and social relationships during COVID19 were collected from 488 Qataris (mean age=26.9±9.6 years) using an online survey.

Results:
The participants reported an increase in physical and sedentary activities during versus before the pandemic. Further analysis revealed that this increase was reported among the participants who experienced improvement or no change in the relationship with spouses, children, parents, siblings, uncles, neighbors, work colleagues, and overall relationships. However, the participants reported worsened social relationships experienced no increase in physical activity during the pandemic.

Conclusion:
The results show that “lenient” COVID19 regulations contribute to enhancing participation in physical activities. Uniquely, this increase is associated with improvement in social relationships. These results might suggest that participating in physical activities can help “mitigate” the possible deterioration in social relationships due to pandemic-induced confinement. Therefore, efforts should be made to promote physical activities during pandemic breakouts to protect the welfare of the social relationship. However, future studies are needed to confirm the current findings and verify these speculations.