On Thursday, the NCAA Institute for Sports Science released extended guidelines to help schools continue to navigate a return to fall sports amid the coronavirus pandemic, including testing and results within 72 hours of competition in “high-risk contact sports,” 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, it was because there was simply no way to drive them safely,” Emmert said in a prepared statement. “This document presents advice from healthcare professionals on how to resume college sports if we can achieve an environment in which COVID-19 rates are manageable. Today, sadly, the data is pointing in the wrong direction. If you are going to Having college sports in the fall, we need to handle the pandemic much better. “
Although the testing and contact tracking infrastructure has expanded considerably, variations in the approach to reopening America for business and recreation have been correlated with a considerable increase in cases in recent weeks. pic.twitter.com/TN1aE3lQ5L
– NCAA (@NCAA) July 16, 2020
The NCAA guidelines released Thursday also included testing strategies for all athletics activities, including preseason, regular season, and postseason, along with daily health checks, the use of face covers, and social distancing during training, competition and outside athletics.
“Any recommendation on a path to a safe return to sport will depend on the national trajectory of COVID-19 spread,” said Brian Hainline, NCAA medical director. “The idea of sports resocialization is based on a scenario of reduced or flattened infection rates.”
According to the statement, the recommendations were developed in collaboration with the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Panel, the COVID-19 Working Group of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM), the Autonomy-5 Medical Advisory Group , the National Medical Association and the NCAA Committee on the Subcommittee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports Prevention and the Performance Subcommittee. The guide also takes into account the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While the NCAA made testing an important part of its most recent guidelines, it still falls to individual schools to provide the testing, and the document states that “schools must plan to secure the necessary resources for both testing and manage details related to any positive results. ” If the PCR tests cannot be performed within 72 hours of the competition, then the competition must be postponed or canceled, or an alternative test plan must be developed and agreed.
NCAA guidelines state that any “high exposure risk” individual must be quarantined for 14 days, and that includes members of the opposing team after the competition. In some cases, the document states that this could mean a complete team.
The NCAA also gave guidelines for travel, stating that when feasible, “schools should aim to travel and play the same day to avoid overnight stays,” an unlikely scenario for the college football season. If an overnight stay is necessary, the NCAA recommends that the travel protocol include universal masking and social distancing for people traveling with others in a private car, truck, rented bus, or rented plane. It also suggests that “prepackaged meals or room service should be considered.”
The NCAA also gave guidance to help protect game officials, suggesting the use of an “electronic whistle.”
Equally important to its guidelines on how to try to operate safely during the pandemic, the NCAA also presented details to help campuses know when it is no longer safe to continue college sports:
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Lack of ability to isolate new positive cases or quarantine high risk cases of contact on campus
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Inability to conduct symptomatic, surveillance, and pre-competition tests when warranted
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Local community or campus-wide testing rates that local public health officials consider unsafe
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Inability to adequately track contact
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Local public health officials who say the hospital infrastructure cannot cope with a sudden spike in COVID-19 related hospitalizations.
While the NCAA continues to update its guidelines and practices that schools should consider, individual campuses are still in charge of developing and executing their own plans as staff and student athletes return to practice.
Big 12 schools plan to implement the 72-hour test, which a conference spokesperson aligns with the guidance of their league’s medical advisers and is one of the recommendations that the principals’ soccer task force has already made. athletic Big 12.
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