The NRL's bio-security and pandemic expert has shutdown talk of a July 1 return despite ARL Commission chairman Peter V'landys declaring the game is hopeful of an early return due to the drop of coronavirus infections.
The ARLC chairman boldly declared the NRL will continue in front of no crowds on July 1 to minimise the devastating financial impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the code.
V'Landys has left the door open to several options to continue the remainder of the season, in opposition to the advice received from the pandemic expert.
"We're very optimistic about starting on the 1st of July," he told Fox Sports on Monday. "The figures are encouraging in the last few days on the infection rate.
"They're certainly nowhere near as much as our pandemic expert predicted. If that trend continues, that gives us two months to continue."
In response to V'Landys' bold take, the expert told the Herald it was premature to make predictions about how things will turn out or how soon the NRL can return to the field.
"The flattening of the curve is the impact of the travel bans enacted between March 5-10 on Iran, South Korea and Italy," the professor said. "It takes two to four weeks to see the impact of interventions in epidemics.
"We won't know until after the first week of April — until which time we will still be seeing the impact of travel bans — how it will progress from there.
"There is likely still community transmission we have not detected because of a restrictive testing policy.
"I think we can also see from the increasingly strict measures being implemented by the government that they, too, view the situation as serious based on the data and the expert advice they are getting and are placing protection of the community as the highest priority."
The professor advised the NRL to stop playing on March 23 after an increase in positive coronavirus tests, warning a player could die if the competition continued.
from WWOS http://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/nrl-pandemic-expert-shuts-down-july-1-return/91c7efd8-ceac-48e5-b93a-8a1c2843c78d
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