The NCAA Sport Science Institute released expanded guidelines on Thursday to help schools continue their return to fall sports in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, including testing and results within 72 hours of the high-contact sports competition, but NCAA President Mark Emmert admitted that the virus is heading in the wrong direction.
“When we made the extremely difficult decision to cancel the championships last spring, there was simply no way to do them safely,” said Emmert in a prepared statement. “This document provides health professionals with advice on resuming university sports if we can create an environment where COVID 19 rates are manageable. Unfortunately, the data today points in the wrong direction. If there is to be a college, sports we need to get a much better grip on the pandemic in the fall. “
Although the testing and contact tracking infrastructure has expanded significantly, the different approaches to reopening America for business and leisure have in some cases correlated with a significant increase in recent weeks. pic.twitter.com/TN1aE3lQ5L
– NCAA (@NCAA), July 16, 2020
The NCAA guidelines released on Thursday also included test strategies for all athletics activities, including pre-season, regular season and post-season, as well as daily self-health controls, the use of facewear and social distancing during training, competition, and outside of athletics.
“Any recommendation for a path to a safe return to sports depends on the national evolution of COVID-19 proliferation,” said Brian Hainline, NCAA’s chief medical officer. “The idea of re-socializing the sport is based on a scenario of reduced or flattened infection rates.”
According to the press release, the recommendations were made in collaboration with the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Board, the American Medical Society’s Sports Medicine (AMSSM) COVID-19 Working Group, the Autonomy-5 Medical Advisory Group, the National Medical Association, and the NCAA Committee on develops competition protection and medical aspects of the subcommittee on sports prevention and performance. The guidelines also take into account recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While the NCAA has made testing an integral part of its recent guidelines, it is still up to individual schools to provide the tests, and the document states: “Schools should plan to secure the resources that are useful for both Conducting the tests as well as managing the tests are required. ” Details related to positive results. “If PCR tests cannot be performed within 72 hours of the competition, the competition should be postponed or canceled, or an alternative test plan should be developed and agreed.
The NCAA guidelines state that people with “high exposure risk” should be quarantined for 14 days – and this includes opposing team members after the competition. In some cases, the document states that this could mean an entire team.
The NCAA also set travel guidelines, stating, if possible, “Schools should aim to travel and play on the same day to avoid overnight stays,” a scenario unlikely for the college football season. If overnight stays are required, the NCAA recommends that the travel protocol include universal masking and social distancing for people traveling with others by private car, van, chartered bus, or chartered plane. It is also recommended to “consider pre-packaged meals or room service”.
The NCAA also gave advice on protecting the game officers and suggested the use of an “electronic whistle”.
Just as important for their guidelines on how to try to work safely during the pandemic, the NCAA also set out details so that campuses know when it’s no longer safe to do university sports:
Lack of ability to isolate new positive cases or quarantine cases with high contact risk on campus
Inability to perform symptomatic, monitoring, and pre-competition tests when warranted
Test rates across the campus or in the community that are considered unsafe by local health authorities
Inability to adequately track contacts
Local health officials say that hospital infrastructure is unable to compensate for an increase in hospitalizations related to COVID-19.
While the NCAA continues to update their policies and practices that schools should take into account, individual sites continue to be tasked with developing and implementing their own plans when employees and athletes return to training.
The Big 12 schools plan to conduct the 72-hour tests, which, according to a spokesman for the conference, follow the instructions of the league’s medical advisors and are among the recommendations already made by the Big 12 Sports Directors’ Football Working Group.
Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN that his conference, along with the other Power 5 conferences, contributed to the development of the document. “We plan to follow it.”
“Some of them are recommendations, some are best practices, some are requirements,” said Bowlsby. “In general, we all accept the document and will do everything we can to ensure that we all have the same minimum standards for the A-5, and I think we will expect our non-conference opponents to meet the requirements.” same provisions. “
Bowslby said “time will tell” whether enough tests are available to meet the guidelines.
“It’s definitely one of the challenges,” he said. “Not only the availability of tests, but also the processing time from the submission of the test to the return of the results.”
While much of the focus focused on key planning decisions later this month, Bowlsby repeated that he would like to go to the pre-season camps in August, “to see how we feel when we helmet and again Shoulder pads return “.
“It was never really about the season starting on time,” he said. “It’s about being safe and in good health to be able to continue doing the things you need to do to move forward through the fall, and if we can do those things in August, we’ll start on time. If we can If you are disturbed, decisions have to be made as to whether we can start on time or not, or whether we are going to a conference schedule or something. It is day after day. There is really no decision to keep going as long as you can go on .
“To be clear, let’s go ahead with the advice from scientists and doctors,” he said. “There are national trends that haven’t been good in the past three weeks, but as you hear from almost everyone who is an expert on this virus, they will tell you that they cannot predict exactly what will happen to the virus The other is that you just have to develop and apply best practices and learn from your experience. “
.
