COVID recovery timelines will vary for returning Huskies

Since returning from the holiday break, the UConn women’s basketball team has seen four games called off because of the recent surge of COVID-19 and the omicron variant while the men’s program has lost two games.

Both programs have had multiple positive COVID cases within their programs.

But it’s not just an issue with UConn. Ten of 11 Big East men’s basketball programs and eight out of 11 women’s teams have had to shut down and/or have had games canceled within the past few weeks because of the rapid increase in the virus.

And while the CDC has lowered its recommended quarantine protocol from 10 to five days for people who are exposed to COVID, the Big East’s current policy to keep positive players quarantined for 10 days has delayed game rescheduling and resumption of play even more.

How will players bounce back from COVID as teams resume games? It may depend on how severe the symptoms.

Dr. Jordan D. Metzl MD, a sports medicine physician at Hospital for Special Surgery, told Hearst Connecticut Media Wednesday that there still are unknowns in how the virus affects college athletes. Nearly two years into the pandemic, there also are still disparities among those who test positive for COVID.

“A couple years ago in 2019, when COVID first started happening, we didn’t know anything about it. It was a brand new disease, we didn’t know how it would affect people, who it would affect, how much it would affect them,” Dr. Metzl said. “One thing became true was that even if college-aged athletes were exposed to COVID — it would be better if they wouldn’t be — that it was a different disease for them, especially over time compared to older people, who might be getting it.”

Since March 2020, it’s been reported people who regularly work out and maintain healthy lifestyles experience less severe symptoms of COVID than those who don’t.

While doctors say everyone will react differently to getting the virus, athletes have shown to be less likely to suffer severe symptoms, be hospitalized or even die from COVID.

“Your body’s immune system fights any infection you have, if it’s a flu or COVID or whatever, and the more you exercise, the younger you are, the more robust your immune system is and the better able you are to fight infection,” Dr. Metzl said.

And with the help of vaccines and boosters, Dr. Metzl said athletes who are fully vaccinated have a lesser chance of experiencing severe and ongoing symptoms.

“If you’re a college-aged athlete you have less of a risk because of your age and your activity, and then if you’re vaccinated you have a double less of risk and so we think it’s pretty safe for those people,” he said. “That being said, every disease affects different people differently.”

While we have a better understanding of how to prevent COVID and how to treat it, there are still many unknowns about the virus and how it affects certain demographics.

Dr. Metzl said despite an athlete experiencing less severe symptoms after testing positive, there’s not

enough information on whether they’re more or less likely than non-athletes to test positive after exposure to COVID.

The new variants to the virus, including the most recent omicron strain, also pose varying symptoms.

People who tested positive for the delta variant often had respiratory issues. Meanwhile, common symptoms with omicron include fatigue, body aches, sore throat, fever — typical cold and flu-like symptoms. Someone who tests positive for COVID could experience every symptom, just a couple, or none at all and be asymptomatic.

Experiencing symptoms can mean multiple days spent on the couch or in bed with little to no energy. While for others it could mean one really bad day with body aches and heavy fatigue before waking up the next day feeling back to normal.

No matter how one experiences COVID, Dr. Metzl said it’s best to lay low from exercising and pushing oneself physically to avoid jumping back in too quickly and risking injury.

“This disease is a viral disease that can affect your fatigue, it can affect your muscle strength, it can affect your whole body. You feel lousy,” he said. “It may predispose you to risk of injury and so like any viral illness, probably a little bit worse than the flu, you don’t want to be exercising if you have had COVID.”

Once an athlete feels better and their symptoms have lessened, Dr. Metzl recommends the athlete begins adding workouts back into their routine slowly and gradual as to avoid immediately overworking themselves.

UConn coach Geno Auriemma told Bob Joyce on Monday’s UConn Women’s Basketball Coaches Show that a player would need five days of practice after coming out of quarantine before they would be ready to play in a game.

The timeline for a return to practice in preparation for a game will also vary from player to player, depending on how a person experiences the virus.

“When you have any kind of illness, viral illness or whatever, it basically knocks you down and you have to build back up and that can include your fitness level, your fatigue ability, your muscle strength,” Dr. Metzl said. “People heal from different things differently. “And so, when it comes to exposure to COVID, how they fight it and how serious of a case they have, what parts of their body system might be affected, meaning was it their heart? Their lungs? Their fatigue? There’s a whole bunch of different things for everybody. There’s not a one-size-fitsall.”

Dr. Metzl used the example of an athlete having a concussion to explain how an athlete who’s tested positive for COVID would stagger their return to full intensity workouts one step at a time:

“If you’ve had a concussion for example, we don’t send you right back on to the soccer field. We have you first have no symptoms and rest, then we have you have no symptoms with riding an exercise bike, then no symptoms with running, then no symptoms with practicing and then no symptoms with playing in a game. So, the idea is the same, it’s graduated or a step-wise return to activity.

“The only difference between a concussion and COVID is if you have a concussion, you’re not contagious to anybody else. So you have to make sure you clear the quarantine period, which is currently five days, to make sure that you’re not infectious to anybody else. That’s the only difference.”

It’s unknown how many of UConn’s players tested positive for COVID and to what degree of symptoms they’re experiencing. With only eight healthy players (four of UConn’s total 12 players are injured) the women would need only two players to test positive to force the program shutdown and not meet the Big East’s requirement of seven healthy players to play a game.

Both UConn basketball teams are also dealing with non-COVID injuries — the women have been without Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Aubrey Griffin and Nika Muhl, the men have been bringing Adama Sanogo back from an injury.

Auriemma told Joyce players began testing positive on Dec. 26, the day they returned to campus. Auriemma, who missed the opening two rounds of the 2021 NCAA Tournament due to COVID, also noted one player tested positive while at home for the holidays and did not make the trip back to Storrs on Dec. 26.

“You had a couple [positive cases] right away and then a couple more a day or two later,” Auriemma told Joyce following UConn’s cancellation of its Jan. 5 game at Georgetown. “Now the schedule is staggered, coming back. We used to get an injury report, who is coming back from a sprained ankle. Now you get who is coming off of COVID, whose days are up.”

UConn’s first scheduled game back, a Dec. 29 home game against Marquette, was called off because of positive cases within the Marquette program.

The Huskies were then forced to cancel their next three games due to their own COVID issues within the team, including most recently Friday’s game at Villanova.

UConn’s next scheduled game is Sunday against Creighton at Gampel Pavilion. The Huskies are then scheduled to play at Butler next week. However, the Bulldogs canceled their Friday game at Seton Hall on Wednesday due to their own issues with COVID.

Hurley began feeling his symptoms Christmas Eve. His entire family — including son Andrew, a member of the UConn team — tested positive.

Several men’s players returned to campus on Christmas and were experiencing symptoms. Then the string of positive tests began.

The Dec. 28 game at Xavier was canceled, as was a New Year’s Day game against Butler in Hartford.

Next up is Saturday’s game against Seton Hall in Newark. That’s still scheduled.

Then the men host St. John’s Wednesday at Gampel Pavilion, the same day the women are scheduled to play at Butler.