We can start contact rugby in Sri Lanka – SLR medical officer
Rugby authorities are confident of convincing the Ministry of Health to resume the season after the Chief Medical Officer of Sri Lanka Rugby (SLR) Dr. Namith Sankalpana conducted a workshop to all stakeholders of the sport entitled ‘Safe Return to Rugby’ at the Duncan White Auditorium of the Sports Ministry on Thursday.
Some 300 people including B.A. Abeyratne, President of the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association, Ruwan Pathirana, Assistant Director Ministry of Education, Dr. T. Ruwan Pathirana, Ministry of Health, clubs, schools captains, coaches, managers and masters-in-charge attended the event.
“I have formulated this COVID-19 guideline by using the World Rugby (WR) guidelines as a framework and by carefully considering the current COVID-19 situation in the island. This is the key to restart playing rugby in Sri Lanka. However, everybody needs to strictly adhere to these guidelines in order to make it successful. It will be a huge responsibility of every individual who involves and loves this game,” stated Dr. Sankalpana.
SLR is one of the few national sports bodies which has formulated a guideline to engage in the sport safely post-Covid, even appointing a former SLR president Christopher Jordache as the ‘Covid Director’.
Dr. Sankalpana has detailed different strategies from Covid spreading outside of the rugby bubble by focusing on four special areas such as home and practice environment, administrative sector, match venue and match day guidelines.
“We are using very simple strategies. We have advised all clubs to appoint a Covid Control manager. His responsibilities are to implement these guidelines in their respective clubs and also he needs to coordinate with Covid coordinator in the SLR office. He will be the focal point. All the clubs should communicate with him. If there is some sort of problem, he will inform me and I will decide on case by case of what we should do,” he explained. SLR is hopeful Sri Lanka could become the first nation in South Asia to restart rugby if they receive the green light from the Ministry of Health to conduct the scheduled Dialog Club Rugby 7s next month.
Dr. Sankalpana is optimistic of rugby, which is regarded as a high-risk contact sport, being restarted since Sri Lanka has succeeded in containing the spread of the viral outbreak.
“If you consider the situation in Sri Lanka in the past 100 days, we don’t have a community spread so far. All cases are from expatriates from overseas. If we apply WR guidelines, if you don’t have community spread, if you have opened non-essential services in your country such as shops and also if you started schooling, that indicates you can start in your particular area,” said Dr. Sankalpana in an interview with the Sunday Times.
“We can start contact rugby in Sri Lanka but the problem is in Sri Lanka we don’t have guidelines. It should come from the health ministry through DG (Director General) of Health Services. If he issues a guideline, it becomes a rule in Sri Lanka otherwise this is just a document,” he said.
The DG of the Health Services recently issued a circular classifying what are low-risk and high-risk contact sports.
“We have already prepared the guideline. We want to forward this guideline to the health ministry through the Sports Minister. We are trying to have a discussion with him and explain the real situation. May be the health ministry will do some changes. Ultimately we will have an official documentation on safety guidelines for Sri Lanka,” he said.