NBA-style COVID plan could work for NHL
The NBA is going to training camp with a detailed coronavirus protection and detection plan.
The NHL is going into overtime trying first to set fiscal, camp and season parameters.
The pro leagues were lauded for COVID-19 awareness by staging last season in respective and protective bubbles. However, with 2020-21 schedules that involve home games and travelling, the potential for virus spread through community transmission will be heightened.
What does this mean for the Vancouver Canucks?
They have to keep their preventive guard up before and during camp. If training commences Jan. 1 in advance of a reduced schedule starting Jan. 15, they'll hope the possibility of a shorter quarantine period for players returning to Canada is in place to lessen the 14-day protocol — unless the NHL builds in a COVID-19 buffer and pushes the season start to Feb. 1.
Regardless of which scenario plays out, what's happening now in the NFL is startling, and is a cautionary tale for the NBA and the NHL.
The NFL is struggling to meet scheduling mandates — and maintain competitive credibility — with rosters ravaged by positive-test cases and staff potentially exposed to COVID-19. The Baltimore Ravens have had more than a dozen players test positive for COVID-19, and 22 overall who have identified as a high-risk close contact over the last nine days. Their meeting in Pittsburgh with the undefeated Steelers was postponed three times to Tuesday. It will now be played Wednesday.
None of this surprises Dr. Brian Conway, president and medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre.
“It was entirely predictable,” he said Monday. “The measures in place are insufficient to prevent cases from occurring with players or within the infrastructure of the teams. And that's what we're seeing. There is considerable community-based spread in the environment that surrounds the teams and players are interacting on an ongoing basis.
“It's shocking. None of us want anything to fail ... We know the bubble is the most efficient system and anything less is taking a chance.”
That chance can be minimized if the NHL follows the NBA's lead on COVID-19 camp edicts. Players were tested on a daily bases over the weekend in the lead-up to required individual workouts Tuesday and group practices from Dec. 6-10. Virus protocols for the NBA are as follows:
■ Anyone who tests positive has two return-to-work avenues. Ten days or more after the first positive test or onset of symptoms, or test negative twice at least 24 hours apart;
■ Any player who tests positive, even if asymptomatic, must wait 10 days and then be monitored in individual workouts for an additional two days;
■ The occurrence of independent cases — not spread among players or staff, or a small or “expected number” of COVID-19 cases — will not require a decision to suspend or cancel the season.
“I would want to add when someone tests positive, there has to be intensive screening of contacts to make sure we know where they got it from so that we learn from it,” stressed Conway. “And that we detect anybody else who's positive who we may have missed to prevent it from happening again.
“If you're trying to maintain everybody being as healthy as possible, there are three things: testing, isolating and understanding where it (virus) came from. If we're going to play in our hometown, you can't combine epidemics that are at a different stage of their development.
“If you have very significant community outbreaks that are not controlled, or being addressed, from one country to another, you can't compare countries. It will also come down to making a (health protocol) decision in a particular province.”
That's where it gets interesting for the Canucks.
In advance of their July camp, players arriving from the U.S. and Europe had already completed the 14-day quarantine. Those taking commercial flights from other provinces were in quarantine for eight days, while those who remained in B.C., or drove here from another province, didn't have to quarantine.
Could those rules change? Could the 14-day quarantine be reduced? Hard to imagine Dr. Bonnie Henry allowing players to quarantine and practise if the Canucks tried to conduct an early January camp before a Jan. 15 season start.
“It would probably not be prudent,” said Conway. “Current guidelines are that they quarantine. There are some shorter quarantines being looked at for asymptomatic individuals. If they test negative and remain asymptomatic for seven days, and they test negative again, the quarantine could end. But that's probably as short and as open as I would go.”
Conway added that what's really at play for the Canucks, and all pro athletes, is to be good citizens. Christmas gatherings might seem like a good idea, but the virus is relentless.
It strikes all.
Young and old. Rich and poor.