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The NFL’s giant COVID-19 experiment ends Sunday with the unlikely feat of an on-time Super Bowl, closing a season with no canceled games.
Why is this important: The season suggests that with the right resources, security measures, and cooperation – all of which have been lacking in the overall U.S. response – life can go on during the pandemic without the uncontrolled spread of the virus.
The big picture: The NFL decided early on that it would not force its thousands of players, coaches and other staff to live in a “bubble” like other sports leagues had done.
- Instead of, the league has extended the public health basics of social distancing, testing, contact tracing and isolation across all 32 teams. To avoid spread, officials were prepared to postpone games or bench players.
Jeff Miller, The NFL executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy told Axios: “The approach we took was to appreciate that there was an expectation that individuals would get COVID – and what can we do to prevent it from spreading through our facilities. ”
- “Our protocols were based on this premise – that living in our 32 communities during a pandemic was a risk, but we wanted to make sure that, as best we could, we could prevent the spread of the virus.
Between the lines: Some of the NFL’s findings have been released by the CDC – including what the league has learned about the transmission of the virus.
- The biggest changes the league has had to make over time were in “our evolution from what a high-risk contact was,” Miller said.
The league discovered that risky contact with an infected person was not limited to interactions of 15 minutes within 6 feet. Instead, the definition has become more complex, taking into account time, distance, ventilation and mask wear.
- “Those four factors all had an interaction within them, which was, in our experience, much more complicated than six feet and 15 minutes,” Miller said.
The bottom line: “We never saw the virus spread through the line of scrimmage,” Miller said – even when players who subsequently tested positive entered the game.
- The league was able to confirm that was the case thanks to genetic sequencing.
Go further: Super Bowl preview
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