The sports industry could take a major hit from the coronavirus outbreak, including the upcoming NCAA tournament, Major League Baseball games, the Master’s golf tournament in April and the Boston Marathon, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The NCAA, MLB, NBA and NHL are all assessing the spread of the coronavirus and have been in contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The outbreak, which started in Wuhan, China, has already taken a toll on spring sports, including postponement of the World Indoor Track and Field Championships in China, cancelation of the Hong Kong Marathon and postponement of five top-flight league soccer games in Italy.
In Switzerland and France, the national hockey league is playing its games behind closed doors.
The NCAA’s signature basketball tournament, which begins later this month, has yet to announce a plan though a college-player-advocacy group urged the organization to consider staging its March Madness games in empty arenas.
Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief of health services at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which came after the peak of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, told the Journal that canceling mass gatherings might not be the answer.
“During a pandemic, there’s really not a lot of evidence that canceling mass gatherings is of much benefit,” she said. “If you think back to H1N1, you probably don’t recall a lot of cancellations.”
The Summer Games, set in Tokyo in July, has yet to be canceled.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said there is some data to suggest that social distancing has “some modest impact on the spread of virus. You can buy yourself some time. Things are not as intense. That’s very important for the medical sector, because if things can be stretched out a little bit, then we can manage all the worried well, moderately sick and very sick better.”
Four more people died from the virus in Washington State, bringing the total number of reported deaths in the U.S. to six. The Washington State deaths are the first reported in the country.
The global death toll from the virus passed 3,000 on Monday.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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