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    New Study Finds Covid Spikes After N.F.L. Games With Fans

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    As the N.F.L. makes plans to return to stadiums at full capacity this season, researchers published findings that “fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes” in the number of Covid-19 cases.Major League Baseball, the N.B.A. and other sports leagues have started to let fans back into their stadiums and arenas, with most teams limiting attendance to 10 to 20 percent of capacity, but some allowing more. The N.F.L. has even grander plans. Last week, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league hoped to open all of its stadiums at full capacity when the season kicked off in September.“All of us in the N.F.L. want to see every one of our fans back,” Goodell said in a conference call with reporters.Yet new research submitted to The Lancet, a scientific journal, in late March suggested that there was a link between the games that had large numbers of fans in the stands and an increase in the number of infections in locales near the stadiums. The study, which is being peer reviewed, is one of the most comprehensive attempts to address the potential impact of fans at N.F.L. games.The authors, led by Justin Kurland of the University of Southern Mississippi, used the number of positive cases not just from the counties where the 32 N.F.L. teams play, but also from surrounding counties to track the spread among fans who may have traveled to games from farther away. After adjusting the figures to eliminate potential false positives and days when counties did not report cases, they found surges in infection rates in the second and third weeks following N.F.L. games that were played with more than 5,000 fans in attendance. The study does not prove a causal link between fan attendance and Covid-19 cases, but suggests that there may be a relationship between the two.“The evidence overwhelmingly supports that fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes” in the number of Covid-19 cases, the researchers wrote.Jeff Miller, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president for communications, public affairs and policy, said in an interview that public health officials in cities and states where N.F.L. teams play found no “case clusters” following the 119 games held with fans in attendance. Miller added that a study done by researchers at the M.I.T. Sports Lab, which was unpublished and independent, found no notable increases in Covid-19 infection rates “in the appreciable time frame following the games.” That study also looked at Covid numbers from surrounding counties but compared them to “synthetic” data used as a control group and found little difference between the two sets of numbers.“Obviously, that was heartening,” Miller said. A study by the Florida Department of Health determined that Covid-19 infection rates were “slightly higher” in the Tampa area compared to the rest of Florida in the weeks after the city hosted the Super Bowl in February. Zack Wittman for The New York TimesMiller pointed to a study released by the Florida Department of Health that was not peer reviewed which determined Covid-19 infection rates were “slightly higher” in the Tampa area compared to the rest of Florida in the weeks after the city hosted the Super Bowl in February. A handful of people were infected after attending related N.F.L. events, but the state’s health department found that most transmission of the virus was “likely from private gatherings, in homes, or unofficial events at bars and restaurants.”About 1.2 million fans attended N.F.L. games last season, as owners bet that the games would not inflame the pandemic any further. Teams sanitized their stadiums and asked fans to wear masks and sit away from other groups.More than a dozen N.F.L. teams, including the three franchises in Florida and the two in Texas, hosted games with more than 5,000 spectators during the regular season. The Dallas Cowboys led the league in attendance in 2020, averaging more than 28,000 fans at its home games, followed by the Jacksonville Jaguars (15,919), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (14,483) and Kansas City Chiefs (13,153).Kevin Watler, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, said contact tracers found “very low numbers” of positive coronavirus tests among people who attended Buccaneers home games during the season, and researchers do not believe those people spread the virus to others.Dr. Rex Archer, the director of health for Kansas City, Mo., said health departments in the region detected no spread of the virus linked to Chiefs home games. The 1,000 or so fans who sat in club seats had to test negative to be allowed to attend, a requirement that prevented up to a dozen people per game from entering the stadium. Bars and restaurants, though, were harder to track because some were shut while others, particularly in neighboring Kansas, were not.“You could have 15,000 socially distanced fans at Arrowhead Stadium, yet some people packed into a bar,” he said.The league cited a separate study preprinted in February that showed that attendance at N.F.L. and college football games last season did not have a “significant” impact on the spread of Covid-19 but only tracked positive cases in counties where those games were held. The research submitted to The Lancet, however, tracked more extensive data from surrounding counties.Positive cases of coronavirus could not solely be traced to N.F.L. games in part because stadiums are not the only place fans gathered. “You could have 15,000 socially distanced fans at Arrowhead Stadium, yet some people packed into a bar” on game days, said Dr. Rex Archer, the director of the health department in Kansas City, Mo.Chase Castor for The New York TimesWhile Goodell is eager to see full stadiums in the fall, John Mara, the president of the Giants, was more measured. His team and the Jets will coordinate with the governor’s office in New Jersey before deciding how many fans can attend games at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford during the 2021 season.“As the vaccines continue to roll out, hopefully the positivity rate will be going down in the coming months,” Mara told reporters last week.In a statement, Miller of the N.F.L. said the league would, as it did last year, follow the recommendations of local, county, state and federal public health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and “continue to uphold with the advice and partnership of medical and public health experts as we look to the 2021 season.”Trying to establish definitive causal links between a single event and a change in infection rates across a large metropolitan area is complicated. The authors of The Lancet study concede that their research only shows that two events — games with fans and increasing positive Covid-19 rates — coincided. Other events like political rallies, the reopening of colleges or holiday travel may have contributed to an increase in infections, especially in states where preventive measures like the wearing of masks were less widely adopted. Infections may have also increased because fans watched games with their friends in living rooms or at bars, gatherings that were beyond the N.F.L.’s control.“The strength of these studies is they are showing something, but the correlations can only point out the possibilities, not the causation,” said Bruce Y. Lee, the executive director of Public Health Informatics Computational and Operations Research at City University of New York School of Public Health. “It’s not just a football game and people go home. There are all these associated activities around the game.”To establish that N.F.L. games caused the spread of the virus, researchers would need contact tracing data on fans who attended games and then tested positive. That information is scarce, though, since many local health departments used their resources to educate the public on preventive measures and increase coronavirus testing. In Duval County, Fla., health officials said they did not study whether fans who attended Jacksonville Jaguars games were infected or whether the team’s home games increased the spread of the virus.In part because not everyone cooperated with contact tracers’ requests, even people who attended N.F.L. games and tested positive had difficulty determining whether they got infected before, during or after the games.Eight residents who tested positive for the virus told contact tracers that they had recently attended Cowboys home games, health officials in Tarrant County, Texas, said in November.Researchers in the study submitted to The Lancet found spikes in the number of positive cases after games that had more than 5,000 in attendance, a reason, they argue, that leagues and event organizers should welcome back customers cautiously.“We are not saying that the N.F.L. shouldn’t have opened up to fans,” said Alex Piquero, a sociologist the University of Miami and a co-author of the study. “But we have to understand the public health implications of opening up.” More

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      How the Seattle Seahawks Stayed Covid-Free

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe N.F.L. Had Over 700 Coronavirus Positives. The Seahawks Had None.The only team to play the entire season without any confirmed positive cases did so with innovative thinking, vigilance to protocols and some Pete Carroll-style competition.The N.F.L. rolled out a grand experiment to play a not-at-all socially distanced sport in a pandemic. The Times went behind the scenes with the Seattle Seahawks and the Cleveland Browns to understand how the science and the upheaval played out.CreditCredit…Pool photo by Ted S. WarrenFeb. 5, 2021Updated 6:00 a.m. ETOn the N.F.L.’s march to complete a 269-game schedule amid a pandemic, more than 700 players, coaches and other team personnel tested positive for the coronavirus. It upended rosters, with the Denver Broncos starting a game without any of their three quarterbacks and the Cleveland Browns once fielding a team with nearly all of their receivers out, and it postponed games, with some outbreaks pushing them into midweek or to a bye week.Through it all, only one of the league’s 32 teams remained untouched by the virus: the Seattle Seahawks. And how they made it through the long season virus-free, in Washington State, where the United States’ first positive case was reported, is a testament to innovative thinking and procedures. The team’s devotion to following health guidelines became a guidepost for the N.F.L. and other leagues grappling with how to proceed as the deadly virus continued to grip the country.“They invented a playbook for a safe practice environment at a time when the future was deeply uncertain and people were questioning the wisdom of pro sports starting up,” said Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist who has helped organizations respond to the coronavirus and informally advised the Seahawks. “You have to be willing to absorb some costs, and you need leaders who can communicate in a crisis.”In late July, the league and its players’ union rolled the dice by deciding to play a full season without creating a closed community, or a bubble, which the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A. and the N.H.L. used in 2020. That meant thousands of team and staff members would go their separate ways each night, vastly increasing their potential exposure to the virus.The Seahawks faced perhaps the most arduous circumstances in the N.F.L. Their 2020 schedule included five cross-country flights, which meant they would log more miles than any other N.F.L. team. And when they were home, the Seahawks trained not far from Kirkland, Wash., the nation’s first coronavirus “hot spot.”This made the Seahawks witnesses to the pandemic well before the season kicked off, and its grim toll made them question whether football could be played safely. Sam Ramsden, the team’s director of player health and performance, cared for his wife, Lisa, in March, when, doctors believe, she had Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.Sam Ramsden, the Seahawks’ director of player health and performance, became the team’s point person for infection control.Credit…Nicole Boliaux for The New York Times“I didn’t really imagine the N.F.L. being able to have a full season,” Ramsden said. “I wasn’t a Debbie Downer about it, I was just trying to be realistic.”Starting in late spring, after the N.F.L. began plowing ahead with plans for the 2020 season, Ramsden, Coach Pete Carroll and other team leaders used a combination of pragmatism, flexibility and gamesmanship to duck, bob and weave through the pandemic.With training camps, the first in-person football activities of the season, set to open in late July, each team appointed an infection control officer to coordinate efforts to reopen its facilities. Ramsden, who has worked for the Seahawks for 22 years, took on the role rather than giving it to the head athletic trainer, who he felt would be too busy handling injuries.Ramsden has an easygoing patter that belies his attention to detail, and his quiet intensity is a counterpoint to that of Carroll, a hands-on coach known for out-of-the-box ideas. Throughout the pandemic, Carroll pushed Ramsden for answers to problems. At other times, he deferred to his expertise. Carroll also did his own research, and floated ideas to Ramsden and others about minimizing exposure.Like other teams, the Seahawks installed dividers in the showers and between lockers. To avoid crowding, two auxiliary locker rooms were added, and large rooms and practice fields were turned into meeting spaces. Ventilation systems were upgraded. Tents were set up outside for safer dining. Carroll had windows that could open installed in his office to increase air flow.People in the organization took on extra tasks. The team’s football operations department created a schedule for who would be tested and when. (Almost 36,000 tests were ultimately given.) Each morning, trainers and others handed out sensors made by a German company, Kinexon, that tracked how close players, coaches and staff members were to one another and for how long. The hospitality staff members who usually managed corporate and internal events collected health questionnaires from people arriving at the facility. The travel coordinator made sure the team’s drivers were tested and buses were disinfected. On the road, a total of 139 players, coaches and staff rode to and from games and airports in seven buses instead of the usual four.“It was like a band of brothers,” said Ramsden, who wore a T-shirt a few days each week that read, “Stay Negative or Stay Home.”To keep people moving when they were inside the team facility, Ramsden had the building’s intercom chime every 12 minutes as a reminder.Credit…Nicole Boliaux for The New York TimesWhen they were at their team facility, the Seahawks ordered food with the Notemeal app on their phones, rather than stand in line in the cafeteria (where congregating unmasked led to transmissions on other teams). On road trips, the team asked hotel kitchens to use the app as well, something other teams adopted.Ramsden expected to be replaced in his new role by a medical professional. Instead, his bosses asked him to remain in charge because of his ability to genially cajole players, who needed to be prodded to consistently wear their masks and tracking devices. The players were accustomed to spending hours together in weight rooms and hot tubs, but Ramsden reminded them to keep it moving.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Car Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCar Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.A surge in coronavirus cases and game postponements has led to tighter rules about player interactions, on and off the court. But it’s not always clear where the outbreaks began.The N.B.A. is working to keep players from shaking hands and hugging before and after games as virus infections persist.Credit…Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 20, 2021, 6:59 p.m. ETLast Tuesday, the N.B.A. and its players’ union tightened their coronavirus protocols — mandating that players spend at least the next two weeks almost exclusively at home or at their hotels on the road when not playing basketball.Three days later, the Washington Wizards held a news conference saying that six of their players had tested positive for the coronavirus and that the team did not have enough players to practice. That same day, Karl-Anthony Towns, the Minnesota Timberwolves star whose mother died of Covid-19, said that he, too, had tested positive.Almost one month into the season, the N.B.A. has struggled to contain the coronavirus while playing outside of the restricted campus at Walt Disney World in Florida where it finished last season. Stars have been sidelined. Several teams, including the Wizards, Boston Celtics and Phoenix Suns, have postponed multiple games. Some, like the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, have taken the floor with skeleton crews, missing most of their top players because of contact tracing. More than 40 players have tested positive since training camps began in early December — 27 of them in the past two weeks. Only nine of the league’s 30 teams have not had a game postponed at least in part because too many of their players could have been infected.And starting Wednesday, team security were to be stationed at midcourt before and after games to remind players not to hug each other.The protocol shifts signal the difficulty in trying to play a contact sport indoors during the winter, when health experts said the pandemic would be at its worst. The N.B.A. was praised for being among the first major sports leagues to stop play when the pandemic reared its head last March and for finishing its season in the summer. But now some are openly wondering whether the league should be playing at all.Even so, the league remains confident that its health and safety protocols are strong enough to withstand the outbreaks and that the postponements won’t threaten the integrity of its season. The players’ union declined to comment.“I think it’s in line with where we thought we could be given how serious the pandemic was getting,” David Weiss, a senior vice president of the league, said of the postponements in an interview.He added: “This exact time period is when we thought it was going to be difficult.”The N.B.A. only scheduled the first half of its season, which was shortened to 72 games from the usual 82, in part because it predicted some postponements. In nearly 160 pages of protocols sent to the league’s 30 teams before the season, the N.B.A. said it was “likely” that some players and personnel would test positive and that it “may be necessary” to later modify the guidelines.The Boston Celtics have played shorthanded and postponed games because of the virus and injuries.Credit…Maddie Meyer/Getty Images“Your protocol is only as good as the people are able to follow it,” said Dr. Cindy A. Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. She said not being in a bubble, as the league was during the summer, matters more than whatever the rules may be.“The protocols could be great,” she said. “They’re relying, though, on individuals again. But now they’re relying on individuals with a lot less oversight. And they’re relying on people to understand what puts them at risk in getting Covid. We’re not good at that. I think we’ve proven that as a country.”George Hill, a guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, told reporters last week in response to the tighter protocols: “I’m a grown man, so I’m going to do what I want to do. If I want to go see my family, I’m going to go see my family. They can’t tell me I have to stay in the room 24/7. If it’s that serious then maybe we shouldn’t be playing. It’s life. No one’s going be able to just cancel their whole life for this game.”The league’s contact tracing protocols, positive tests and injuries have at times left several teams without the minimum eight players required to compete. Those who test positive must isolate for at least 10 days or test negative twice more than 24 hours apart. Exposure to someone who has tested positive may also require a quarantine, depending on the setting and timing of the interaction. The N.B.A. uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines to define close contact as being “within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period” in the two days before a positive test or the appearance of symptoms.The Coronavirus Outbreak More