While spring and summer may be too soon for events to move forward safely, the fall can be fairly normal according to Dr. Michael Roshon, who also cites current infection rates considerably higher than last summer as the reason events pose a risk to operate safely.
Dr. Roshon is the chief of staff for Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs and chief medical officer for USA Cycling. He helped Sports Strategies adapt the guidelines he had authored for USAC to create the COVID-19 Mitigation Plan used at the 2020 Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox.
Dr. Roshon said the distribution timeline of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines will better position fall events to operate safely, providing local infection rates fall as expected. Those events will still need to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines and protocols that include mask-wearing and social distancing.
Dr. Roshon told Fred Dreier, editor-in-chief at VeloNews, “My gut instinct right now is the fall — maybe even August and early September — can be fairly normal. It’s reasonable to predict that anyone who wants a vaccine could get it by the late summer, or so. I would say an event happening after that, you have a reasonable chance of being post-vaccine rollout, and as far as we can tell, there should be a much lower risk of transmission. You may need to do extra work to make sure people are vaccinated and get tested before coming to those events — and make sure there is distancing. Those events can probably go on normally.” Read the entire interview between Fred Dreier and Dr. Roshon.
