CIAC Cites Low COVID Transmission for Fall Sports
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) released a report late last week that shared the contract tracing details by local departments of health and found that the rate of transmission was extremely low.According to a report in The Journal Inquirer, only seven student-athletes, out of nearly 29,000, tested positive for COVID-19 as a direct result of participation in a school sports event that took place during the fall.
While the report did note that additional positive tests were found and did force teams to quarantine, but through contract tracing it was determined the transmission came from. non-sporting events.“Based on the overall review and analysis of fall 2020 data, the CIAC has concluded that its COVID mitigating strategies were effective in engaging 28,842 CIAC member school student-athletes in education-based interscholastic athletics while minimizing the spread of COVID through its events,” the CIAC said in a report released to the media.
“Limitations to these findings include that 29 percent of CIAC member schools did not respond to the survey and that response came from member schools and not directly from local health departments,” the CIAC said in the release. “An assumption is made that schools not responding to the survey did not have any data to report.”
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Fall sports included boys and girls cross country and girls swimming (low-risk), field hockey, soccer and girls volleyball (moderate-risk), and 7-on-7 non-tackle football (low-to-moderate risk), according to The Journal Inquirer.
Full contact, 11-on-11 tackle football was not sanctioned by the CIAC this fall. Modified football had the highest percentage of teams that had a player test positive for COVID-19 at 14.69 percent, followed by boys soccer (13.56 percent) and girls soccer (10.43 percent), The Journal Inquirer reported. Girls volleyball had 9.62 percent of its teams report a positive case.
The report stated that 15.39 percent of games were rescheduled and 2.32 percent of scheduled games were canceled in the fall. It did not have data on how many were rescheduled or canceled due to COVID-19.
For the full story from The Journal Inquirer on the CIAC’s low transmission of COVID-19 during the fall sports season, click here.