Prep sports: Santa Clara County wastes no time responding to state’s new guidelines
California health officials update youth sports guidelines hours after a settlement between state, advocates announced.
Santa Clara County, widely known for having some of the country’s most strict COVID-19 regulations, responded immediately Friday morning to the California Department of Public Health’s updated youth sports guidelines.
“The County of Santa Clara is aligned with the state’s new guidelines for youth sports,” the county said in a one-sentence statement.
The CDPH updated its guidelines Thursday night, hours after indoor sports proponents won a legal settlement with the state of California to loosen restrictions that would allow high school sports such as basketball, volleyball and wrestling to return this spring.
The CDPH says the updates take effect today.
The new guidelines require that masks be worn by youth and adult sports participants, coaches and support staff. They also state that teams must follow the rules in place at the collegiate level, such as stricter testing, contact tracing protocols and coordination with local health officials.
In a news conference Thursday, Let Them Play CA founder Brad Hensley said the organization had partnered with the 11:11 COVID Project, a company Hensley said does testing for WalMart and Disney employees, to provide free PCR tests to athletes across the state.
In its updated guidelines, the CDPH summarized the college-level requirements for testing.
They are:
— Regular periodic COVID-19 testing of athletes and support staff must be established and implemented prior to return to practice (other than the “[p]hysical conditioning, practice, skill-building, and training that can be conducted outdoors, with 6 feet of physical distancing, and within stable cohorts” that is currently authorized in all tiers).
— This includes baseline testing and ongoing screening testing. Based on current evidence and standards, both daily antigen testing and periodic PCR testing are acceptable testing methods for both baseline and ongoing screening testing.
— If following a daily antigen testing protocol, the protocol must begin with a PCR test followed by daily antigen testing. Any positive antigen test must trigger a PCR test for confirmation. PCR testing is required for symptomatic athletes and staff and should be conducted within 24 hours of symptoms being reported.
— For high-risk contact sports (basketball, field hockey, football, ice hockey, lacrosse, rowing, rugby, soccer, squash, volleyball, water polo, and wrestling), competition between teams is permitted only if the team can provide COVID-19 testing and results of all athletes and support staff within 48 hours of each competition.
Go here for the complete list of the CDPH’s updated guidelines.