Amesh Adalja discusses how college football season is a ‘risk’ to be played.
The NCAA has established a coronavirus advisory panel to guide its response to the outbreak of the disease.
Dr. William Schaffner, M.D., and Professor, Preventive Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, previously discussed with Vols Wire of the reality if the college football season can be played in 2020.
Schaffner is part of the NCAA coronavirus advisory panel alongside Amesh Adalja, M.D. – Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
Adalja also discussed the coronavirus outbreak and the reality of not having a college football season in 2020 with Vols Wire.
“I think there are some issues with contact sports that need to be addressed,” Adalja said.
Issues center around the next 3-4 weeks in which Schaffner discussed being a period around the country — and not evenly distributed — of seeing “a surge in cases coming to medical care.”
“It is important to know we are not going to see one peak,” Adalja said. “We are going to see distinct peaks in different cities because this is not spreading homogeneously. You can think about seeing a peak in New York City in the coming days to weeks, but there are other cities in the country which really do not have that type of trajectory.
“I do not think you will see one peak for the country, but I do think we will have a lot of information as New York City progresses through its outbreak.”
Schaffner can see the coronavirus pandemic start to diminish during the summer with warm weather, but he also views COVID-19 with the capability of returning during the fall and winter.
Adalja anticipates COVID-19 returning also.
“I fully anticipate that this will be back in the fall season just like other coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses that have winter season dominance,” he said. “We know that other coronaviruses that cause about 25 percent of our common colds do exhibit the seasonal cyclicality where they peak in the winter and spring, and then decrease their transmission during the summer. I do think that viruses in the same family tend to behave similarly, we can expect some diminishment of transmission as the Northern Hemisphere enters the summer, but remember the Southern Hemisphere will be entering winter at that time, so we may see increase intensity of transmission in places like Australia.
“I do not think it will be completely gone because I do think there is still a lot of population that are susceptible. A large swath of the population is susceptible, so it may not completely diminish the transmission and maybe able to overcome environmental conditions because there are so many susceptible individuals still in the population.”
With a return of the coronavirus in the fall and winter expected, the college football season taking place is uncertain. Both Adalja and Schaffner will provide the NCAA recommendations for the well-being of student-athletes, coaches, trainers, fans and all individuals that could face from July until January throughout the duration of fall training camp to the national championship game.
“I do think think the contact sports do pose a particular risk to the players if somebody is affected,” Adalja said. “Maybe with extensive testing to see if players are already exposed and immune, that could be one way to salvage some element of a season. Having individuals playing, that are already immune, and they cannot transmit it to others — I do not know if that is something that can be feasible. It might be unreasonable for teams to screen all of their players to see if they are all immune to this — and not if they have just been affected — it is if they already have been affected and recovers then I think it is a different story.
“I do think that mass gatherings will likely be something that will be risky in September and we have to modify certain college and professional sports if they are going to continue. Minimizing the mass gathering element of them and they maybe played without fans, for example like we have seen happen earlier in this pandemic.”
The question that also hovers over the sport is how long will the coronavirus pandemic pose a problem for football — could it be a year from now?
“For something like that you really have to think about a vaccine,” Adalja said. “Is there some kind of preventative measure to make it safe, and I think that is what we are holding out for in something like football, in that kind of a manner. I think that is probably the same for a lot of contact sports.
“Things are evolving and I think that if you are able to say if everyone was immune already, because they all got infected, then I do not think it is that much of an issue, but I do not think we will see that level of infection that you can randomly pick football players and say that they are all going to be immune and safe from it. I do think that we are going to be probably having modifications to these types of sports until a vaccine is available.”
