Alejandra Yañez | THE RIDER
Editor’s Note: The Rider interviewed Jimmy Gonzales, the team physician and chief medical director for UTRGV, and Jonah Goldberg, the senior associate athletic director for communications, for this article early last week. Since then, 11 students have tested positive for COVID-19, with 10 of those cases being student athletes, according to Doug Arney, vice president for Administrative Support Services and chair of the UTRGV Infectious Disease Committee.
The Rider interviewed Arney on Tuesday and confirmed an additional three positive cases on campus, raising the total for last week’s COVID-19 cases to 14. Of these three additional cases, one is a faculty member and the other two are UTRGV staff members, according to Arney.
Asked if these cases are related to the 10 athletes, he replied that he did not have that information.
Arney said some of the athletes are being housed on campus facilities and are being monitored by Sergio Martinez, director of Housing and Residence Life.
“If they go home though, essentially nobody checks on them. … In order to come back to campus, the COVID tracking team will communicate with them,” he said.
The Rider requested an interview Monday with Gonzales to inquire on the condition of the 10 student athletes, but the request was denied by Goldberg.
In an email sent to The Rider on Monday, Goldberg wrote, “Although we are not commenting on the general condition of the affected student-athletes, we can say that if any of them do require treatment, we are fortunate to have access to incredible resources through Student Health Services and UT Health RGV to provide the best possible care.”
The novel coronavirus has proved to have lasting effects on the body and with UTRGV sports expected to begin as early as Nov. 25, The Rider spoke to experts to learn the health risk factors for college athletes.
Studies have shown that up to 15% of college athletes will show signs of heart damage after recovering from COVID-19.
Asked whether athletes are more susceptible to heart damage after contracting COVID-19, Jimmy Gonzales, the team physician and chief medical director for UTRGV, replied, “I don’t know that they’re more susceptible to getting these issues. I know that if they do end up getting something like a mild carditis or anything cardiac related, the symptoms will be more noticeable. And it’s because of athletes working at almost near peak performance, a drop in that performance going down from 100% to 95 is very noticeable.”
Gonzales said he believes heart problems appear to be more prevalent in athletes due to the high level of performance expected.
“I think that should they get these complications, they may have a riskier course because we’re trying to get them back into athletics,” he said. “They’re trying to perform at a high-functional level, so if you’re trying to get back into activity and you end up having one of these complications, then there will be risk associated with it. So, not necessarily that it’s a higher risk, but that they are more susceptible to adverse events should this happen because of increased activity.”
Experts fear that COVID-19 is triggering myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, in athletes.
“That is something that we monitor and, again, that is the reason for the EKGs [electrocardiograms], for the blood work and for echocardiograms when we’re concerned about that, it’s because of that concern of myocarditis with COVID,” Gonzales said. “I have seen some residual fatigue and shortness of breath from positive results [outside of the university], but again we haven’t had a lot of myocarditis. But that is something that we are looking for and we test for prior to returning them to competition.”
The team physician said the problem with COVID-19 is that it is a novel virus, and due to this, it is difficult to know for sure at this point how it is affecting the body.
“We have no experience with it and so, over the past few months, since March, we’ve been learning about what symptoms we can be looking for,” Gonzales said. “The issue with COVID-19 is that there’s other effects aside from those respiratory effects that we’ve mentioned previously. You can have the mild carditis; your body enters a hyper-coagulative state so you run the risk of blood clots. Those can cause strokes, those can cause heart attacks, those can cause several other different things.”
Symptoms from COVID-19 can vary from lung failure and heart problems to skin manifestations, he said.
“It’s very difficult to put it in a category and say it’s just one thing that we’re looking for,” Gonzales said.
The team physician said UTRGV Athletics requires athletes complete a cardiac workup before returning to their sport after testing positive.
“They’re getting cardiac exams, they’re doing questionnaires, taking EKGs and, depending on what we find from there, we may go into further exams, such as echocardiograms or blood work, including troponin,” Gonzales said. “So we are looking for those things and I haven’t noticed a huge increase in any of the positives that I’ve seen as of yet.”
He said there are several protocols used for college athletes before returning to play. A two-week period of rest is required of convalescents after the initial infection or positive test.
After the two-week period, athletes will undergo a complete physical evaluation/cardiac evaluation. Once cleared, athletes may slowly return to activity, “understanding that they may not be ready for full participation for several weeks,” Gonzales said.
Asked how UTRGV athletes are being protected from the virus, Jonah Goldberg, the senior associate athletic director for communications, said they are living together on campus in “close family units” to avoid the risk of infection.
Goldberg said the athletes are required to wear their facial coverings at all times, except when they are on the court.
Other preventative measures that athletes are taking to limit the risk of contracting COVID-19, according to Gonzales, include wearing a facial covering, practicing social distancing, washing hands, using hand sanitizer and staying away from public places.
“That’s gonna be the best way to mitigate this virus,” Gonzales said.
