In an interview with ESPN, Dr. Allen Sills, chief medical officer of NFL, stated Wednesday that the NFL's high COVID-19 vaccine rates offer an "unique opportunity” to model a solution for the ongoing pandemic.
Sills stated that "we know we will have positive cases this year," just a day before the league opens its 2021 regular season. "I don’t believe that 'COVID zero’ is a realistic goal and we should all understand that. We believe we can keep our teams safe, prevent widespread outbreaks, and with vaccines, turn this into a seasonal disease, rather than a catastrophic pandemic.
Sills believes that the NFL will continue to play all its 2020 games on time. Although positive tests may again affect the availability of players and staff, the league expects that most of the corresponding diseases will be mild and the league has already seen evidence to suggest that large-scale outbreaks between teams will be much less likely than in 2020.
This week, more than 93% of NFL players and 99% of all football-related staff were at least partially vaccinated. Players who are not vaccinated are subject to testing daily. They are also required to follow additional protocols. Fully vaccinated athletes are only tested once per week. According to the NFL Players Association, all players must be tested daily. This is in order to reduce the risk of players sharing the virus with each other. However, Sills stated that such cases are "extremely rare."
J.C. Tretter of the NFLPA stated that 14 Tennessee Titans players and coaches have tested positive for this season's virus. The league has not considered any team testing results to be an outbreak as it didn't see evidence of uncontrolled spreading within the facilities. Sills stated that the league has enough data to conclude that people who have been vaccinated are not spreading in a manner that could lead to widespread epidemics. This is because they're not experiencing the same outbreaks as last year.
Sills stated that the NFL has not provided evidence of any outdoor spreads or games during which there was evidence. This is despite the fact that the delta variant is more transmissible.
The NFL's COVID-19 rate, which is the percentage of positive tests compared to the entire testing pool, has been around 1% since the beginning of training camp. While fully vaccinated players can return to the field faster if they test positive, it is more common for them to take up to a week to do so during training camp.
Sills claims that some players who were vaccinated have been cleared within days. This is likely due to the league's MESA testing which found an infection rather than exposure. Some players have returned within a 10 day period while others have taken longer.
Sills stated that vaccines were created to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death. "They're doing a fantastic job both inside the NFL and outside. The ideal function of vaccines is to convert more severe illnesses into milder ones, and that's what we are seeing. People with very little or no symptoms, and a brief duration of illness are what we're seeing. This is not a sign of a vaccine failing. That we were able to convert it into mild respiratory illness is what I see as a success of the vaccine.
