Lions' doc worries about COVID-19 second wave

The team physician for the Detroit Lions believes that a second wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the fall could seriously jeopardize the chances of a full National Football League season.

"I think it’s a real concern," Dr. Asheesh Bedi told ESPN's Adam Schefter on the latest edition of his podcast (via The Detroit Free Press). "And obviously that’d be incredibly devastating not just for sports and seasons, but for the economy and so many facets of our life. I think that’s why it’s so critical that our behaviour in the upcoming months will have such a critical influence on what we’re seeing in the following months. I think as we start to see things loosen a bit and feeling like that first wave is behind us that we absolutely recognize that we can’t let our guard down."

Bedi, who is also part of the Michigan medical staff, says that teams must remain flexible moving forward and maintain current guidelines.

"The CDC recommendations of minimizing exposure still hold true," Bedi said. "While maybe the numbers look more optimistic, we don’t have a vaccine yet and all the things that are going to be critical — social distancing whenever possible, inside-outside the buildings, in training facilities, face masks whenever appropriate, critical hygiene for the facilities, hand-washing — all those implementations, of course, have to be there, particularly when you’re having a gathering of teams."

The NFL allowed teams to open their facilities last week, but a number of states remain under stay-at-home orders.

Going forward, testing for the league will also be critical, Bedi says.

"As we get a better sense of how frequently and rapidly we can do that for team and personnel, that’ll give us real-time knowledge if a person is a so-called under investigation or a COVID-positive case, and then that gives you the ability to rapidly contact-trace them and to contain that potential infection," Bedi said. "It’s going to be a lot of these aspects coming together, recognizing that football anyway is a contact sport by nature so there’s going to be aspects of this that are a unique challenge, unchartered territory for us to figure out."