Ivy League cancels winter sports as Covid-19 cases rise

Ivy League schools have canceled their winter sports seasons as the country faces a record increase in the case of Covid-19.

The decision of the Ivy League Presidents Council was taken unanimously, the Ivy League said in a statement Thursday. Spring sports will also be postponed to at least the end of February 2021. Fall sports were previously suspended in a decision announced in July.

“Student-athletes, their families and their coaches are once again called upon to make enormous sacrifices for the sake of public health – and we are not taking this decision lightly,” said the Council of Presidents of the Ivy League in a statement.

“While these decisions come with great disappointment and frustration, our commitment to the safety and lasting health of our student-athletes and the broader communities must remain our top priority,” the board said.

The league includes Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania.

The league said its board will monitor the situation and may consider changes depending on the state of the outbreak, which it says includes the possibility of intercollegiate athletics in the spring.

The move comes amid warnings of an increase in Covid-19 cases as the weather cools and forces more people across the country inside.

Holidays like Thanksgiving, where people typically congregate, prompt warnings from health officials and governors and increased restrictions placed in some places.

The Ivy League announcement came on the same day the United States broke another all-time high for reported Covid-19 cases.

There were 161,651 cases reported on Thursday, according to an NBC News tally, which is a daily high and comes just a day after the previous daily high, the 148,302 cases on Wednesday.

There are now nine days in a row that have seen more than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 in the country, according to the NBC News tally; the first was on November 4.

More than 10.5 million cases have been confirmed in the United States and more than 243,000 people have died, according to the NBC News tally.

California became the second state to have recorded more than one million cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, NBC News confirmed. Texas reached this milestone on November 7.

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced promising first results from its Covid-19 vaccine trial on Monday, but it’s unclear when it or any other candidate will generally be available.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this week that there is a possibility that in December doses will be available for those deemed to be a priority.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently said the administration predicted there might be enough to have general immunization programs by the end of March to early April.

Experts have warned that even if a vaccine is available in April, it will not help an increase in cases in the winter. And a deployment could also be delayed by challenges related to vaccine storage and shipping.