The Carolina coast already had one of the smallest sports budgets on the FBS, and that was before a 15% spending cut was ordered due to the projected decrease in state funding and student fees stemming from the coronavirus.
Facing the prospect of having to pay for testing for returning athletes and staff for the virus this summer, athletic director Matt Hogue set to work to find a way to defray the costs. Its 19 sports program includes around 450 athletes, and with individual tests currently costing around $ 100, the tests could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars by the end of the 2020-21 academic year.
Hogue found help from a local health care company, a Carolina coast athletics sponsor, that will provide free trials, at least as long as the athletes return to campus this summer.
“Some of the tools and tactics you should use because you are in an institution where you have to keep an eye on your dollars, that may have already prepared you to see some solutions that you may not be if you are in a school that can simply write a check”, Hogue said. “We have to be creative.”
Athletics departments cannot always count on their insurance companies or the families of athletes to pay for the tests. According to the federal guide issued on June 23, insurers are required to cover people who show symptoms or have been exposed to someone symptomatic; So-called surveillance tests are not part of the mandate.
Just a few hours’ drive from the Carolina coast, East Carolina deals with managing the cost of testing and safety protocols amid financial problems that led the American Athletic Conference school to cut four college sports in may. Athletic director Jon Gilbert said the school has already budgeted $ 100,000 for coronavirus expenses that include tests and supplies like masks. He hopes to exceed that amount and said that some schools could end up spending $ 500,000, depending on the number of cases.
“It is extremely challenging due to the unknown,” Gilbert said. “And the unknown is: We can bring in a team in August when school starts, and we can test everyone and be negative, but as soon as they leave their bubble and enter the general population, then we are all vulnerable to being infected.”
Nebraska’s $ 140 million budget in 2019-20 is more than five times greater than Coastal Carolina’s $ 25.5 million. The Cornhuskers’ 24 sports program has around 600 athletes and is one of the few that generates money. Although a 10% budget cut was recently announced, the program can absorb the cost of testing, in part because of its affiliation with the university’s medical school.
Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos and Hogue said that following best practices for testing, as recommended by the NCAA and conference medical experts, is the only option when it comes to athletes’ health.
“We are not going to skimp,” said Moos. “That is a legitimate expense, and it is something that we are willing to incur.”
The Carolina coast and Nebraska have taken similar approaches by bringing athletes back to campus for volunteer training. Athletes are evaluated on their return, and if the result is negative, there is no plan to evaluate them again unless they show symptoms. Temperature controls are carried out on all those who enter the sports facilities.
“It is extremely challenging due to the unknown. And the unknown is: We can bring a team back in August when school starts, and we can evaluate them and they are all negative, but as soon as they leave their bubble and enter the general population, then we are all vulnerable to being infected. ”
East Carolina Athletic Director Jon Gilbert
Neither school has announced plans for seasonal assessment procedures. Experts have said that soccer players should be evaluated at least once or twice a week in order to be allowed to play in that week’s game.
The financial burden could be alleviated in time. Laboratories are developing methods to screen multiple athletes simultaneously, a process known as pooled testing and commonly used to screen blood donors for diseases like HIV and hepatitis.
Sean Murray, president of the Eurofins laboratory in Des Moines, Iowa, said the group examines a large group of asymptomatic people when there is an expectation that few of them will test positive. It would not save time or resources in active virus zones.
An example: nasal or saliva samples are taken from 10 athletes. Half of each sample is combined with the others and a singular test is carried out. If negative, all 10 athletes are eliminated. If positive, the remaining sample from each athlete will be analyzed separately to identify the infected athlete (s).
Assuming the pool test is negative, Murray estimated the cost to be approximately $ 150 – $ 15 per athlete – to analyze 10 samples together instead of $ 1,000 to analyze 10 samples separately.
Laboratories offering group test samples for coronavirus would need to apply for an emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, which has not approved the technique. The FDA issued early guidance on the test method, but first wants to determine that mixing samples does not reduce precision.
“That’s the big limiting factor that we do,” said Brett Lewis, director of sports medicine for the state of East Tennessee. “The people we go through now prefer not to until the FDA gives the go-ahead, as if this is a good way to go.”
Dr. Brian Hainline, medical director of the NCAA, said the sample group tests have been successful when testing HIV for pooled blood donors.
“Similar strategies, assuming high sensitivity, are also very promising for COVID-19 testing,” he said.
Dr. Greg Stewart, a physician on the Tulane athletic team and head of the American Athletic Conference’s COVID-19 medical advisory team, said the sample group tests make sense and can save a “ton of money.”
Stewart noted the importance of time. If a group test was conducted the Thursday before a Saturday game and it was positive, there may not be enough time to process the individual tests to identify the infected athletes.
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