After all, when the season started with the opening of the training camp at the end of July, we were in the middle of Covid-19 spikes across the country, and football is the definition of a contact sport – contact is one of the activities. we are encouraged to avoid getting sick and slowing down the spread of the virus.
But here we are: Super Bowl LV with the Kansas City Chiefs battling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium in Florida; 25,000 fans attended, including 7,500 health workers who were specially invited (and previously vaccinated) and put in 30,000 cutters. The fans will all get PPE sets that include KN95 masks when they enter the stadium. And yes, even the vaccinated fans will have to carry one.
It appears that many of the lessons learned during the season-long experiment are helpful outside the grid, and that it applies to the wider community.
How we got here
Back in the summer, many people wondered how football – with its attacks, huddles, heavy breathing, spitting sweat and spit, packed locker rooms and weight rooms, loud cheers from fans – could go through an entire season without Covid-19- ignite outbreaks left, right and middle.
Experts in sports as well as public health had their doubts.
“Think about the size of the soccer tournament, and think about the nature of the sport with contact at every play … It’s unlikely that the NFL can come in a full season,” veteran sportsman Bob Costas told me and Anderson Cooper said. during a CNN coronavirus town hall end of July.
But bubble was not in the cards. Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer since 2017, told me it was “not practical or appropriate” to set up a bubble like the NBA had. Although the entire basketball season could be played in one place, with football, it just wasn’t possible.
When the NFL decided to continue with the season, Sills and other NFL officials faced the unprecedented challenge of making football as safe as possible for everyone, from the staff to the players and their families.
“I feel it’s the right thing to do to try to learn to live with this virus. I really do,” Sills said in July.
“It’s a struggle that people face in all facets of life. Schools, businesses, places of worship. Everyone is trying to find out, can we reopen and do some of our activities and still reduce the risk? And I think that’s really important. that we follow the approach of trying to learn as well as possible how to live with this pandemic, ‘he said at the time.
So, in partnership with the NFL Players Association, the CDC and other health experts and advisors, the NFL has developed a plan to move forward. This included mitigation and supervision measures in facilities, travel and games. These measures wore mask; regular testing and genetic fingerprint of the virus for positive cases; physical distance; proximity tracking devices that captured information about who spent how much time with whom; contact tracing; hand wash; and disinfection of facilities and the rescheduling of games as well as education of staff, players and their families. In total, the plan covered approximately 11,400 players and staff from 32 teams in 24 states.
On September 10, when the Kansas City Chiefs kicked off the Houston Texans in the first game of the season, there were just under 6.4 million confirmed Covid-19 cases in the U.S., with an average of seven days of more than 35,000 new cases a day. It looked like a lot back then, but by comparison, the country has now fetched 26 million confirmed cases, with an average of seven days of about 137,000 new cases per day.
But while business exploded across the country, the NFL was relatively untouched. According to the MMWR report, there were 329 confirmed Covid-19 cases between August 9 and November 21. This is only 2.9% of the 11,400 players and staff tested – statistics that any state would be proud of.
And when the unpublished results were tabulated until January 30, the NFL said about 957,400 tests had been done with an overall positivity rate of less than 0.1%.
Sills had only three people – one player and two staff members – admitted to hospital and there were no deaths, Sills told me when I interviewed him earlier this week.
Lessons learned
One key component built into the NFL plan was flexibility – the ability to turn to a new strategy should a Covid-19 outbreak occur.
“One of the things we all learned in the medical community about this pandemic is that it violates rules. It does not follow what we think can happen. And so we really had to pay a lot of attention to what we think. Data tells us and to be willing to bend, adapt and adapt our protocols, ‘Sills said.
Was it sailing smoothly? No. An outbreak early in the season forced the NFL to examine the data and change direction.
“In early September, we had an outbreak in Tennessee, and we went into it and really dug into it and tried to understand how the transfer took place despite our protocols,” Sills explained.
“It was then that we realized it was not just 15 meters within 15 minutes,” Sills said. He noted that not all close contacts are equal. “And so we started stratifying contacts into what we call high-risk close contacts and just some kind of regular contact.”
This means that the exposure they had to limit had to be extended to what Sills calls ‘eating, greeting and meeting’.
“Indoor room: even if you are more than 6 meters apart, if you are in a badly ventilated room for a long time, if someone is positive, there can be transmission within the rooms. Eating together: most people do not ‘to put on a mask when they eat. And then say hello: just the social interaction outside the facilities. If you’re in the community, if someone’s positive and you go chopping, or you get a massage at your house , “he said.
In response to this new information, several league-wide changes have been made. The first involved stricter restriction for seven days when a positive test result was received; the second was more frequent tests; and the third was the expansion of contact detection and transfer risk assessment that focused on identifying high-risk contacts.
But now, in addition to time and distance during an exposure, high-risk contacts have also taken into account the use of face mask (including the type and fit) and the ventilation in the area where the exposure took place.
“We devised this quadratic matrix, which said, let’s think, what is the ventilation status of the exposure? What is the mask status of the individuals?” Sills said. “Then we will also consider how much cumulative exposure time and distance is. If you fail in two or more of these categories, we consider it a close contact with a high risk.”
The biggest lesson of all, according to Sills? “I think the biggest thing we’ve learned, which is not shocking to those in the medical profession: universal masking works. It’s the most effective strategy we have.”
Outside soccer
Although the NFL certainly has more resources than most other organizations, the lessons that emerge from the great experiment could potentially be used in other situations.
“If you cook everything, it was not the fact that we tested every day. It was not the fact that everyone everywhere wore a fancy proximity detection device. What prevented the transmission was the use of mask “and avoid personal meetings, living in the outdoor environment, not eating together, rapid reporting of symptoms, isolation from someone who has been exposed. None of the things I just mentioned require a lot of resources,” Sills said.
In other words, these are the same basic rules we have known since the beginning of this pandemic – with more evidence than ever before that it works.
This is a lesson you can apply this weekend, to whatever team you root for. Play it safe; do not turn your Super Bowl event into a superspreader event – mask, keep physical distance, make sure there is enough air circulation, and please do not double dip in the guacamole.
Andrea Kane and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health contributed to this report.