US sports leagues cope with COVID-19 outbreaks amid variants

DENVER (AP) — U.S. sports leagues are seeing rapidly increasing COVID-19 outbreaks with dozens of players in health and safety protocols, amid an ongoing surge by the delta variant of the coronavirus and rising cases of the highly transmissible omicron mutation.

Both the NBA and NHL have had to postpone games over the last month with so many players sidelined, and the men's basketball teams at Tulane and the University of Washington have seen cancellations due to outbreaks in their programs. The NFL won’t postpone games, saying forfeits could be in play instead.

The difficulties for U.S. sports come on the heels of soaring infections in Europe, where English Premier League officials called off three soccer matches in four days due to the virus and the German government temporarily restricted Bundesliga arenas to 50% attendance or 15,000 fans.

But don’t expect the U.S. leagues return to “bubble” play or shut down for a couple of weeks to let things subside.

“The way our system is set up now, an infection triggers a chain of events and that leads to confusion, disruption, mayhem. But from a medical respect, these people are mainly vaccinated and not going to go to the hospital,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We’re in a very different world from a year ago. … It’s not too bad for young, healthy athletes," Chin-Hong added.

And there's too much financially at stake for leagues to consider shutdowns, given the millions upon millions of dollars lost when sports took a hiatus last year. There's also fan pressure to take into account.

“The short answer is money. It’s what’s driving (the leagues’) decisions to continue to play, even in the face of these outbreaks,” said Nola Agha, a professor of...