The rate of positive cases shown has increased by 60% in the last 3 weeks, to 25. 5 constant positive cases with 100,000 citizens to 15. 9 constant positive cases with 100,000 citizens, according to the knowledge provided through emory University.
“It’s a bad situation,” said Pooja Naik, a master’s candidate in public fitness at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, who analyzed knowledge for USA TODAY.
Nine of the 14 counties with Big Ten schools showed higher infection rates over the following week, adding Indiana and Michigan, either up to 101%, and Penn State up to 92%. Monroe County of Hoosiers, Indiana, outperfied all Big Ten counties with 63. 2 instances for another 100,000 people: an infection rate in the Power Five, just behind Virginia Tech County.
Colleen Kraft, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University, said it’s “really hard” to see a strategy for the Big Ten to move forward with an eight-game season starting October 24 because of the highest rate of cases on school campuses.
“I think there’s probably been a motion in recent weeks to live with COVID, but that’s going to be a fear because other regional (sports) meetings haven’t been very successful in maintaining their football,” he told me. . (Charlotte announced Thursday that her game opposite North Carolina on Saturday had been canceled due to a sold-out list. Charlotte did not have enough offensive line players to play due to the search for touch after 3 positive instances on the team).
Kraft, a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 Advisory Committee, said it was clear that the protocols can only offer limited coverage to players.
“It doesn’t apply to what they do at night or what they do at their own pace,” Kraft said. “And those are the times that are truly dangerous times. Therefore, we have mitigated the threat related to the game itself, absolutely cannot save you from leaving the game.
“I don’t think having a behavioral replacement on campus can cause a lot of problems, even if we can be safe sports. “
But Jay Wolfson, a prominent public fitness professor at the University of South Florida, said advances and public opinion justified the Big Ten’s resolve to play. Football is played in South Florida.
“Some of us, specialists in medicine or public fitness, say it’s dangerous, that everyone is closed, to put a bubble around everything,” Wolfson said. The truth is, the other people in this country are in a position to come home.
“What they’re going to have to do, however, is that it’s going to have to be thoroughly controlled and rhythmically, and if there are blips, it’s prevented and it has to be preventable. “
Fans will not be able to attend the Big Ten games, and Wolfson said it would mitigate the spread in the COVID-19 network. He also highlighted the good fortunes of the NBA and NHL by containing the COVID-19 broadcast.
“The dangers are still there,” Wolfson said, “but the facts have changed, we have new tools. We’ve learned new lessons, we’ve looked at what other put have done, what other industries have done, and it’s time to say, ‘Okay, there’s this compelling psychosocial desire to move forward and show that we’re not being defeated. this thing and sport in many tactics are the quintessence of our society that says, ”We can do it’.
Amesh Adalja, infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said ten-season rates would have infrastructure.
“It’s not about whether you’re helping or assisting in the decision,” said Adalja, a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 advisory committee. “Do you have the infrastructure to deal with the consequences of this decision?Do you have the ability to control people? Do you have the ability to isolate what happens from this type of interaction from the rest of the network in a way that does not increase the overall threat to an unbearable degree?
“And a lot of what had happened before when we had an idea about football, do schools have the resources to do enough tests to minimize risk?And new technologies are coming in that may have some influence, and we’ve noticed. “how some of the professional game leagues have handled the game and that’s helping to make that decision’.
The Big Ten have announced plans to control players with antigen verification, and Adalja and Kraft have indicated that antigen verification can be used reliably.
“There is emerging evidence that antigen testing can distinguish who is contagious from who is not,” Adalja said. “There is a general impulse to use antigenic testing in a much more strategic way to be able to answer this question, whether the asymptomatic individual is contagious. “