As the NFL prepares for its teams to open training camps next month and continues to express optimism about its ability to start and complete…
As the NFL prepares for its teams to open training camps next month and continues to express optimism about its ability to start and complete its 2020 season, the nation’s most prominent infectious-disease expert sounded a warning Thursday.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN that football players would need to be placed in a “bubble” environment, isolated from others, for a season to be successfully staged this fall and winter amid the novel-coronavirus pandemic.
“Unless players are essentially in a bubble – insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day – it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told the network. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”
Fauci’s concern stands in contrast to the hopes repeatedly expressed by NFL leaders that they can hold a complete, on-time season beginning Sept. 10. Teams are scheduled to open their training camps in late July, and the NFL continues to deliberate with the NFL Players Association over the protocols by which players are to be tested and, if necessary, treated for the virus.
“Make no mistake, this is no easy task,” Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said in a written statement Thursday after Fauci’s comments. “We will make adjustments as necessary to meet the public health environment as we prepare to play the 2020 season as scheduled with increased protocols and safety measures for all players, personnel and attendees.”
The NFL plans to have teams play games in their home stadiums if that’s permitted under local health guidelines. That’s in contrast to the NBA, which has formulated plans to resume its season with players, coaches and other staff members gathered at a single site in a bubble environment at Disney’s sports complex in Orlando.
