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REFLECTIONS ON THE DECISIONMAKING PROCESSES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FEATURE / DR IMTIAZ AHMAD
Dr Imtiaz Ahmad Head of Medical, Queens Park Rangers FC
Our players had booked a team bonding event at Cheltenham Festival on 11.03.20. With growing public health concerns over COVID-19 we made an unpopular decision to cancel this trip, even though Government guidelines placed no restrictions over large gatherings at that point in time (1). Football medics across with country have been faced with difficult questions in recent weeks. Can we train? Are we at risk? How do we keep players fit? Can we travel? Will the season be completed? Can we play behind closed doors? Can we test? We’ve all been taken by surprise by this pandemic and have had to make key decisions for our organisations. Increasing knowledge base in this area was important from the start and the Royal College of
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info@fmpa.co.uk
Physicians held a comprehensive expert update Webinar for doctors on 12.2.20, which I participated in (2). Following on from this I met our Director of Football and Manager to explain that it was clear that a potentially major issue was about to develop and impact not only on football but on society at large. We decided on early quality communication with all staff and players so that they were prepared for what could happen. We developed an in-house COVID-19 protocol for dealing with suspected cases at all of our Club sites, limiting visitors to the Club and doing presentations to first team players and staff on 25.2.20 and the same for our Academy teams. We also arranged regular deep cleans of our training grounds. Once the decision was made to postpone fixtures we decided to send players back
