Q&A: Dr. Glenn Copeland on the return of sports
As professional and bigtime college sports ponder a return from the coronavirus shutdown, the process of staging events and keeping athletes safe is fraught with uncertainty.
Dr. Glenn Copeland has a plan.
Copeland, a team physician for the Toronto Blue Jays, is part of a Canadian company that is advising league and teams on implementing a return. QuestCap has consulted with 26 professional teams in North America, plus 50 from other parts of the world, and some college programs.
An advisor for QuestCap, Copeland has rolled out a blueprint for sports. The plan — which Copeland describes as three “zones” — is built around daily testing of players and every other person at a sports facility.
Hearst Connecticut Media spoke to Copeland about the plan and how sports will look.
Q: Can you explain the concept of using “three zone” to allow sports to return?
Copeland: The three zones are the outer zone, the middle zone, and the inner zone. The outer zone is the world as we see it today. We have to always assume that COVID could be lurking pretty much anywhere. And so the outer zone is that outer world. We don’t know exactly who’s been exposed, we don’t know who could be affected. We don’t know who’s got any immunity with antibodies. So we just assume that everybody could be a carrier and could be contagious.
So what we have to do to keep everybody safe is we’ve got to put them through that middle zone. That middle zone takes place, almost at the entrance to any arena, or training field or any facility that the players are going to come into to, such as a training room, a workout room, a lunch room, and the playing surface. As they get to that door, there will be that middle zone where the testing takes place. Each team will be given all the options available. It could be antibody testing, it could be nasal swab testing, it could be blood testing. We will give all the teams the
options, and what our recommendations are. It will also include symptom checks. It will also include temperature checks. It will also include gathering the data, so that we know what the temperatures are today, what they’ll be tonight, what they are tomorrow with the data doesn’t change. It’s constantly being gathered.
So once we’ve established in that middle zone that that player, coach, trainer, equipment guy, is COVID-free as best as we can tell, they then can come into the inner zone, which we consider to be as COVID-free as possible. Is that 100 percent. No, there’s no way that we can be 100 percent, but with the testing that we’ve recommended, we’re going to be into the high 90 percent range.
The big question is, is there immunity? The answer is that we know there’s some immunity. Every Corona virus produced antibodies to some degree. We don’t know if this particular coronavirus is just going to give immunity, once you had it, for four months, for four years, or is it going to be 40 years. We don’t know. This has been there for 22 weeks now. … The simple answer is, we don’t know.
But the vast majority of our testing and symptom checks and everything will give us a high 90s percent chance that these players, trainers, coaches, managers will be in the inner zone will be COVIDfree. But testing has to be done everyday.
Q: If this all hinges on testing, this means everyone has to be tested — support staff, stadium workers, etc. There’s a large number of people, even without fans. How daunting a task is that, turning those tests around?
Copeland: You’ve got the people who open the stadium, who clean the stadium. There’s no sense in testing everybody and not testing the cleaners. They’re touching more things than anybody. They’re touching doorknobs and they’re touching this and that. So all of those people have to be tested.
But the beauty of our particular program is, those people get tested for hours before the players would ever show up. So we know that by using the high quality tests that are available … you can get through — with the right medical people and health care workers, whether it’s nurses or therapists or team doctors and trainers — you can get through 30 people in 35 minutes. We’ve done this. So it’s a daunting task but, again, you can do the trainers and the equipment guys and and the photographers and the camera guys if you had to.
By the time the players get there, depending on the sports team, you can get them from the outside world into the inside world quickly. The average player will be in that middle world for no more than anywhere between 12 and 15 minutes max.
Q: What about players with pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems, such as a cancer survivor like Jon Lester. What would you tell a player who is apprehensive?
Copeland: The approach that we’ve taken and the approach that I would recommend to every physician — and every physician I know has done this — is, you have to give the player all the risks. Every player, whether it’s Jon Lester to the hockey players or football players, each and every one of them have grown up with risk. I’ve been in the sports medicine world for 41 years now and I’ve seen players lose eyes, I’ve seen guys with catastrophic injuries who are in wheelchairs and so, they go into the game knowing the risk.
This particular virus, we didn’t know the risk 22 weeks ago. Today we’re starting to know the risk. … Statistically, for somebody under the age of 65 who’s not immunecompromised or with different morbidities, the risk is definitely lower but there’s still the risk.
I think that the important thing for any player, is to make sure they clearly, clearly understand the risk that they’re facing, because there is a risk. There was no chance that they’re walking into any arena, any facility, any hockey rink, NBA game, where you’re not going to have the risk of catching this. And then if you do catch it, what is the statistical risk to you in your age group and and your well being? I’ve had this conversation with a number of teams and players.
Q: Are there sports that are safer than others?
Copeland: Fencing is sort of my favorite answer. You wear a mask and if you get within six feet, you’re going to get stabbed.
But I think all of us who were craving live sports watch the weekend golf exhibition with Tiger and Mickelson and Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. And I think we saw the new normal — golf carts by themselves, distance. But they weren’t wearing masks and, for the most part they tried to stay six feet away from each other, but there were parts where they got a little exuberant. But at the end of the day, to the best of my knowledge, they walked off the course after five and a half hours, and they’re all fine. There were press people and there was photographers and there were the golf regulation people and a whole bunch of other people around them. It wasn’t completely just the four of them and that’s a new normal for golf.. For now.
So the sports, of course, that are going to be more dangerous are the ones with body contact. You’re going to see hockey, basketball, football, maybe, carry the higher risk. Soccer, too. The least body contact obviously in the pro sports is in Major League Baseball.
Much of it, in my opinion, will be related to how well the individual sports do their procedures and protocols in the middle zone. How much testing are they going to do, how much is necessary? And right now it’s all a guess. It’s at the beginning, I can tell you the protocols that we’re doing are probably going to be over-protective. But there’s no such thing as being too careful.
Q: It would seem that we’re a long way from fans at major events. What are your thoughts about fans attending games?
Copeland: I’m seeing people in the sports world say how many fans would be safe? And my personal answer is, no fans is the right answer right now.
I believe that we get two or three months under our belt, makes sure that there’s virtually no community spread. And then what you might see is some fans in the stadium. But we haven’t figured that out yet, how to really do that safely, especially in North America. Our case loads are much, much higher than a place like Australia. We have community spread pretty much throughout U.S. and Canada.
My typical answer is, I think every sports fan would do just about anything to turn on the TV and not have to watch the 1986 World Series again.
I don’t think the fan stuff is as important to me. I want to see safe sports. I want to see the players back. But to ownership and the leagues, it’s a major issue from a financial standpoint. But I just don’t see fans being in big stadiums as a general rule until we have a safe and fully effective vaccine, just because we can’t control completely the community spread.