Although the delta variant of the coronavirus is making a strong and deadly push into Minnesota, health officials are confident high school and youth sports this fall won’t be disrupted by the virus as they were the previous 18 months.
For one thing, when the COVID-19 state of emergency was canceled July 1, so was the Safe Learning Plan that allowed Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Health to set enforceable guidelines for school activities.
More important, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said this week, the state’s high vaccination rate — more than 70 percent of Minnesotans have had at least their first shot — and other proven mitigation measures such as masking and social distancing should keep the virus from taking over the way it did from March 2020 through last spring.
“We have very high confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccines — and the data show it — in preventing serious illness and hospitalizations and deaths. So, the vaccines are absolutely working in that sense,” Malcolm said. “And we know about the success of these layered mitigation strategies — vaccinations first and foremost but then continuing to pay attention to those practices like masking and keeping a bit of distance and avoiding crowded places for long durations.”
Six high school sports — including tennis, soccer, volleyball and football — began practices last week, and most competition begins Aug. 26.
This week, the MDH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all unvaccinated children attending school get tested for COVID once a week and that unvaccinated students participating in sports or other extracurricular activities get tested “more frequently” throughout the school year.
Since the state of emergency elapsed, state officials can only suggest and, if necessary, plead for cooperation — although the St. Paul School Board on Tuesday approved a mask mandate for the first quarter this fall.
“This is now in the realm of our best advice, our best recommendations, what we think people should do from a health perspective,” Malcolm said.
Malcolm and Education Commissioner Heather Mueller this week announced a statewide program to help school districts offer testing, but Mueller stressed that districts will ultimately decide what to offer their students.
“This is one tool among a number of layered mitigation strategies that we want to be able to provide our families and our communities,” Mueller said.
All sports were shut down in mid-March 2020 when COVID-19 first started spreading rapidly throughout the U.S. High school and youth sports were back last fall, although players were required to wear masks, and capacities at all venues from high schools to the pros were limited.
Even with those mitigations in place, high school and youth sports were shut down again for more than a month in November and December, and some athletes and teams were withheld from state tournaments last spring because of mandatory quarantines.
Even as the delta variant gains more traction, another shutdown is not likely to happen again if more Minnesotans get vaccinated and all follow masking and distancing guidelines, Malcolm said.
“All of those things, I think, equip us to handle this differently,” Malcolm said. “But it does really require us to make choices, individually and collectively, to take the delta variant and the current degree of spread seriously and act accordingly.”
