COVID-19 Unpredictability Poses Challenges Ahead Of NFL Training Camps

As NFL training camps inch closer, the league is expected to have health and safety protocols to help mitigate the spread of the COVOD-19 virus among NFL teams expected to have more than 100 people gathered in relatively close quarters daily.

While the NFL is sparing no detail when it comes to developing these protocols, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said the unpredictability of the virus and its effects on people, including recovery rate, is among the biggest challenges that not only the NFL but other sports leagues are facing in mitigating the risks of keeping people safe.

“It’s a very perplexing infection,” Dr. Fauci said during an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio hosts Bruce Murray and Kirk Morrison Thursday morning.

“If it were more uniform so that everybody to a greater or lesser degree with some variation had about the same impact on them, then you could make a good prediction as to what would happen if you got infected.”

Around the country, multiple states have seen significant increases in COVID-19 cases. Four of those states in which positive cases have increased—Arizona, California, Texas, and Florida—are home to nine of the NFL’s teams, including the Cardinals (Arizona); the Rams, Chargers, and 49ers (California); the Texans and Cowboys (Texas); and the Jaguars, Dolphins, and Bucs (Florida).

In the tri-state area—New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, home to the Jets and Giants (New Jersey) and Bills (New York), the one-time epicenter in the United States has managed to get a handle on its cases.

Recently, the governors of those states have signed a joint order mandating persons arriving from any state with increasing rates of COVID-19 to quarantine for 14 days.

Still, with the surging number of cases in other states, Dr. Fauci said makes it challenging to put together a concrete plan to ensure sports can not only return but continue uninterrupted.

“When you talk about how we’re going to be able to open up various aspects of our society, including different sports, including football, if everything was stable right now, you could say, ‘Okay, you could make your plan, you know exactly what you want to do.’ But we really are in a state of flux right now.

“The situation is not in control right now. Hopefully, we will get it in control as we start being a little bit more stringent on getting people to do things like wearing masks and staying physically separated to the extent that they can. Those are very important interventions that will ultimately impact decisions that you make about opening, anything, including sports.”

That hasn’t stopped leagues from trying to open up again, including the NFL, which has not backed down from its insistence that it will start its season on time.

Despite the instability brought about by the soaring number of cases across the United States, Dr. Fauci said that a key to allowing sports to return is frequent testing, which would enable the individual teams’ COVID-19 task forces in quickly identifying and isolating those who test positive.

But what happens if there is an outbreak among the teams? At what point does it make sense to shut things down, if at all? Or can simply quickly identifying cases and then isolating those infected be enough in allowing the league to continue to play?

According to World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the typical recovery rate from COVID-19 ranges from two to six or more weeks, depending on the individual and the severity of the virus.

That uncertainty makes it difficult for Dr. Fauci to even guess as to whether there is a magic number regarding the number of cases around the league that will force the NFL to shut things down.

“You really can’t say right now because it depends on the particular circumstance on the level of infection in the community,” Dr. Fauci said.

“Obviously, if you’re in a situation where you’re getting exponential spread of the virus in the community, you’ve gotta be very careful about doing anything that would bring a lot of people together in a space where they could be transmitting.

“If it’s at a lower level, you could do something to mitigate it. I think it would be folly at this point because it probably would come back and be contradictory when the real world tells you what’s going to happen when the virus really does with the virus is going to do. And it’s very unpredictable to know what’s going to happen in September, October, and November.”

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