The NFL’s giant COVID-19 experiment ends on Sunday with the unlikely feat of a Super Bowl on time, ending a season with no canceled games.
Why it matters: The season suggests that, with adequate resources, security and cooperation measures – all lacking in the general response of the United States – life can continue during the pandemic without the uncontrolled spread of the virus.
The big picture: The NFL decided from the start that it would not require its thousands of players, coaches and other employees to live in a “bubble”, as other sports leagues did.
- Rather than, the league expanded public health basic concepts of social distance, testing, contact tracking and isolation across all 32 teams. To avoid spreading, officials were prepared to postpone bank games or players.
Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public relations and politics told Axios: “The approach we took was to assess that there was an expectation that individuals would get COVID – and what we could do to prevent it from spreading through our facilities . ”
- “Our protocols were built on this premise – that living in our 32 communities during a pandemic was a risk, but we wanted to ensure that we would prevent the spread of the virus in the best possible way.
Between the lines: Some of the NFL’s findings were published by the CDC – including what the league learned about the transmission of the virus.
- The most important changes the league has had to make over time are related to “our evolution from what was a high-risk contact,” said Miller.
The discovered league that risky contacts with an infected person were not limited to 15-minute interactions within a 6-foot radius. Instead, the definition has become more complex, taking into account time, distance, ventilation and wearing the mask.
- “All four of these factors had an interaction within them, which was, in our experience, much more complicated than 1.80 m and 15 minutes,” said Miller.
The final result: “We have never seen the virus transmitted through the line of scrimmage,” said Miller – even when positive testers participated in the game.
- The league was able to confirm this through genetic sequencing.
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