BOSTON — Oh, how we miss our sporting events and concerts.
Gov. Charlie Baker says those won’t come back until Phase 4.
Right now, we are still in Phase 3 step 1.
But after seeing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo open up events to fans who produce a negative COVID-19 PCR test within 72 hours, the question becomes is this something we would consider for Gillette, TD Garden, Fenway, or any of our other Massachusetts stadiums that house 10,000 or more people.
“A PCR test is the best test we have currently right, but it’s still just a point in time,” said Dr. Helen Boucher, chief of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center. “The incubation period for this virus is 14 days.”
We asked two different doctors from two different hospitals to weigh in on the move.
“I would be open to looking at proposals and probably recommend something on a small scale as a litmus test similar to what New York state did with the Buffalo Bills,” said Dr. Michael Misialek, associate chair of pathology at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
New York made the decision after what Gov. Cuomo called the “unparalleled success” of the Bills game last month when 7,000 fans underwent COVID tests to attend the home game. Now he says starting Feb. 23, large venues can reopen with assigned, socially-distant seating and at 10 percent capacity. The venue must have at least 10,000 seats.
“There is a small possibility that even with a negative PCR test at day three an attendee could be led into one of these events who is harboring infection and we’ve seen that in studies of long-distance airplane flights across a continent where passengers had negative tests and yet there was still a small outbreak,” said Misialek. “And it was traced back to a false negative where somebody was in that incubation period. So that all boils down to the level of risk and what level of risk is acceptable to the economy to people to our communities.”
Outside of New York, we’ve seen several arenas allow limited seating. Some even going as far as bringing in COVID sniffing dogs to detect fans.
But the message here in Massachusetts seems to be… trust the process.
“Every state leader is making their decisions based on the data they have in hand and their best judgment about what’s safe for all the citizens of that state,” said Boucher. “I fully believe that everyone wants to do the right thing and keep people safe. There are a lot of competing priorities. There’s the public health, the economy people’s mental health all these things matter and I know that these are linked.”
We saw in the Super Bowl tickets were prioritized for healthcare workers. In NY, Cuomo says season ticket holders would get first dibs.
The other thing to consider here is many of these arenas right now are being used as mass vaccination sites.
Cuomo says the state would work with the teams and the facilities, working out arrangements to see what sites can be used to make sure there’s no delay.
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