The NCAA’s leading medical officer and two of his infectious disease advisers warned Thursday that the out-of-control spread of coronavirus in the United States remains a major obstacle that school sports must overcome.
“I feel like the Titanic. We’ve hit the iceberg and we’re waiting when the band deserves to play,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, Emory’s associate chief executive.
Del Rio, a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 Advisory Committee, gave the impression with Dr. Brian Hainline, Medical Director of the NCAA, a webinar organized through the Society of Infectious Diseases of America.
Earlier this week, Big Ten and Pac-12 have become the first Power Five meetings not to play football or any games this fall.
In total, the 4 bowl branch meetings aim to run a spring football season. Six others say they are still making plans for the fall season, adding the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12— more than 3 dozen elementary schools from New York to Texas.
“We want to focus on what’s vital,” Del Rio said. “What is vital right now is that we want this virus. Not doing autumn sports this year, this virus would be for me the number one priority.”
The United States has recorded more than five million cases of COVID-19.
Sports principals and school coaches have argued that schools provide structured environments with common tests and strict protocols that make athletes safer than the general population.
“We had positive tests when our student-athletes first came back here,” said Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. “We’ve had a dramatic fall since they passed under our umbrella and that’s fine. Basically, we have our student-athlete under our umbrella. On a college campus where students move into class, it’s hard to create a bubble.”
Hainline said about 1% to 2% of college athletes who were evaluated in schools went to COVID-19.
Del Rio said meetings make other decisions because they have other information, but because they assess the dangers differently.
“Some meetings will say, let’s move on. It’s a very narrow path, I hope there is no contagion and if there are contagions, we will stumble upon them, and we will be there to prevent them and we will not have an epidemic,” Del Rio said. “But other meetings say no. Our tolerance is for the zero threat and therefore we won’t have it. It is precisely the same knowledge that is simply looked at in other ways.”
The NCAA Tournament and other school sports were canceled in the spring due to the developing pandemic. Hainline said she hoped that national detection, detection and surveillance systems would involve the virus more.
“It didn’t take place and it was very complicated to make decisions,” he said.
Del Rio quoted Georgia, where Emory is located, as an example of a state where the virus is spreading at an alarming rate. He said the state is in 30 cases consistent with 100,000 people, but the target is 10 or less.
“If we can do it, we can do a lot of things,” Del Rio said.
Concerns about inflammatory center disease called myocarditis and the uncertainty of its long-term effects in some COVID-19 patients were cited through Big Ten and Pac-12 as one of the reasons for discontinuation of fall sports. Hainline said she was aware of about 12 cases of virus-like myocarditis in college athletes.
Dr. Colleen Kraft, a professor and infectious disease expert at Emory and a member of the NCAA Advisory Committee, said that while the number of patients you see with COVID-19-induced myocarditis is low, the number of victims is high.
“I’m seeing some very unhappy stories right now,” he says. “I think a case of myocarditis is too much.
Elsewhere, primary school football had announced that it would not play in the first half. The state of New Mexico has become the 53rd FBS school in total, and the third not affiliated to the conference, to check to catch up on the spring season. The Aggies had only four games left on their schedule, and the New Mexico state’s 14-day quarantine order made “impossible” a football program with games on the way,” the school said.
Meanwhile, the school’s football playoff variety committee met almost this week and new President Gary Barta, who is the athletic director of Iowa’s Big Ten, said that while the season is uncertain, the group’s task remained unchanged.
“If the board and the board say we have a PCP,” he said, “we’ll be ready.”
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