DOCTOR: ‘THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT’
UCSF’s Dr. Pandya endorses state plan to resume outdoor contact sports for high schools, youths
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Did California public health officers get it right with the timing of their announcement? Dr. Nirav Pandya, director of the Sports Medicine Center for Young Athletes at Benioff This is the right way to do Children’s Hospital in Oakland, it. The key thing, which has followed the plight has been hard, we needed a of high school athletes during way for the numbers to get better the past year of the COVID-19 in the community. Now pandemic. that the cases have dropped
Pandya, a UC San Francisco significantly and vaccines are orthopedic surgeon, has joined being rolled out the risk of the conversation about the best their being spread in gathering time to return to play. together in sports is much less. Pandya said he received a
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total of 45 text messages and That is an enthusiastic endorsement. emails shortly after the California Department of Public Health
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issued an updated plan on Friday It is safe from a transmission to allow outdoor contact standpoint as far sports to resume starting next as we know right now to resume week. youth sports in the fashion
Pandya spoke to the Bay Area they have done. This is the News Group about the updated right thing and they put together guidelines. His answers were edited very comprehensive for clarity and brevity. guidelines.
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What do you like about the current plan?
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I like the fact that they are testing weekly for the sports that are at higher risk. It allows both physicians and
the state to monitor. If there is a lot of spread going on they can always reverse course.
But they made a good evidence-based decision and they’ve done it in a way that
allows kids to salvage a season, particularly juniors and seniors who have college aspirations but more importantly for the mental health of all of these kids.
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Do you have any health concerns?
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The one thing we need to look at beyond
the COVID rate is making sure that we’re not going to see a whole bunch of injuries as a result of people rushing back to play. That’s more of the pressing issue. It is hard to gauge how much kids have been staying in shape. Are they suddenly going to go out and perform at a high level? We want to make sure we’re not seeing those injuries.
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Are there other issues? A The second thing is we want to make sure the schools that may not have all the resources are supported. Do we have the athletic trainers and means to have testing and medical care also?
It is a great time and day for all those kids who have really struggled over the past year. But the key thing is to make sure schools in more disadvantaged areas have the ability to educate the parents, athletes
and coaches about where to get tested and what to do if someone tests positive. If we have all those parameters then yes, this is going to work great.
We can’t just say OK, let’s go play sports and we will figure this out in four months. As long as we’re constantly monitoring the safety of the kids and the communities they are in this is going to work well. But it needs to be constantly monitored.