That's according to Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) manager of sport and recreation Paul Kelly, who said the lanes at both pools were quieter than ever.

"You don't find lifeguards on the corner of every street. They're pretty hard to get. When you lose a good chunk of them due to COVID or close contacts and that sort of stuff it just makes it a challenge," he said.

Between weather and the virus, more Tamworth residents are staying home from the city's two public pools this summer than even the pandemic year of 2020, Mr Kelly said.

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It's the third summer in a row with lower-than-ordinary usage of the city's two pools, at Scully Park and on Kable Avenue.

"We're definitely feeling, COVID's certainly having an impact on business, on patronage. We're well down on what we'd normally be," he said.

"Distinctly COVID and obviously public health orders is encouraging people not to linger in public places very long ... also, combining with that it hasn't been terribly hot. Up until mid-December we hadn't really hit the 30s at all."

Mr Kelly said the public pools are still honouring their planned 5.30am to 7pm opening hours, often staying open as late as 8.30pm for swimming groups. It's "the intention" for both pools to stay open until the end of the season on April 1.

But with a number of staff already becoming close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case, staffing could become an issue, he said.

It's a problem likely to get worse, with the city registering a dramatic growth in COVID-19 cases since New Year's day.

"That's the intention. That's also dependent on a couple of things. One is weather. We kept Olympic closed for the first month of the season this year, purely because it doesn't have heating", he said.

"If we get to the back end of the season and the water temp at Olympic is very low ... We'd probably look at closing, but we have no plans to do that."

Council spent over more than $80,000 on repairs to the pool before reopening it in 2020.

The council's Annual Report shows the city earned $252,000 in tickets for entry to the two pools in the 2020 to 2021 financial year, compared with just $237,000 in 2019-20.

A spokesperson said the reason for the higher income in charges and fees for swimming centres is due to the end of the drought - but a relatively cooler and wetter 2020 summer held down attendance levels and prevented an expected bounce-back recovery.

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