Fauci: some sports may have to wait until 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading public health expert on President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, said this week that it might be very difficult for major sports in the United States to return to action this year.
Various leagues have considered a number of options for restarting play that came to a halt in mid-March as the extent of the coronavirus outbreak became increasingly apparent.
A key variable, Fauci said in an interview Tuesday, will be whether the country can gain broad access to testing that quickly yields results. He said that manufacturers had made strides in developing such tests but not enough for major sports competitions to resume.
“Safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything,” he said. “If you can’t guarantee safety, then unfortunately you’re going to have to bite the bullet and say, ‘We may have to go without this sport for this season.’”
Fauci’s remarks came as Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and other leagues were scrambling to find ways to safely bring their players together to train and to play games, with or without fans in the seats.
The president has urged sports commissioners to return to play as soon as is feasible, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has trumpeted the feasibility of playing major league baseball in empty ballparks in the state this summer. Some governors, such as Gavin Newsom of California, have been more cautious.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said that although the rate of confirmed cases of the virus had decreased in most of the country, there would probably be a surge in cases again.
“If we let our desire to prematurely get back to normal, we can only get ourselves right back in the same hole we were in a few weeks ago,” Fauci said.
He said that any resumption of play must happen gradually and with great care and added that the authorities had to be prepared to respond if the number of cases began to grow again.
Fauci, an avid runner who grew up playing basketball and baseball, is a fan of the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees. He says he will feel comfortable returning to a stadium when the level of infection is far lower than it is now.
“I would love to be able to have all sports back,” Fauci said. “But as a health official and a physician and a scientist, I have to say, right now, when you look at the country, we’re not ready for that yet.”
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.
When and how can sports return?
What we need to do is get it, as a country and as individual locations, under control. That sometimes takes longer than you would like, and if we let our desire to prematurely get back to normal, we can only get ourselves right back in the same hole we were in a few weeks ago.
We’ve got to make sure that when we try to get back to normal, including being able to play baseball in the summer and football in the fall and basketball in the winter, that when we do come back to some form of normality, we do it gradually and carefully. And when cases do start to rebound — which they will, no doubt — that we have the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing.
Sports are a business, and they have a financial imperative to get back as soon as possible. Some governors and mayors have discussed the possibility of sports’ returning without fans. But there are still hundreds of staff members who have to run the stadium, the clubhouse, etc. What needs to be done to make sure they’re also safe?
The things we need to do to the best of our ability are try and keep the 6-foot distance and wear face coverings. And do the kind of pure hygiene things you do to prevent the spread of respiratory infections: washing hands frequently; wearing gloves, particularly food service, and they do that anyway; changing gloves frequently.