Dr. Fauci: 'Virus will make the decision' on 2020 NFL season

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With four months until the 2020 NFL campaign is set to begin, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding how the league will stage games as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says "the virus will make the decision for us."

"I think it's feasible that negative-testing players could play to an empty stadium," Fauci told NBC Sports' Peter King. "Is it guaranteed? No way ... If the virus is so low that even in the general community the risk is low, then I could see filling a third of the stadium or half the stadium so people could be six feet apart. ... that's something that is again feasible depending on the level of infection. I keep getting back to that: It's going to depend.

"Like, right now, if you fast forward, and it is now September ... I say you can't have a season - it's impossible. There's too much infection out there. It doesn't matter what you do. But I would hope that by the time you get to September it's not gonna be the way it is right now."

Fauci acknowledged that the NFL - unlike other North American sports leagues - has time on its side. But he said diligent testing and responses to a potential second wave of the virus will determine how the campaign unfolds.

"(The season) will be entirely dependent on the effectiveness with which we as a society respond to the inevitable outbreak that will occur ... What we're saying is, 'what is going to be the effectiveness of our response?'" he said.

He continued: "Even if the virus goes down dramatically in June and July and August, as the virus starts returning in the fall ... shame on us if we don't have in place all of the mechanisms to prevent it from blowing up again.

"In other words, enough testing to test everybody that needs to be tested. Enough testing so that when someone gets infected, you could immediately do contact tracing and isolation to prevent the infection from going to a couple of infections to hundreds of infections. That's how you control an outbreak."

Despite releasing a full 17-week regular-season schedule, the league is developing contingency plans amid the health crisis. Proposals for secondary strategies reportedly could include staging games in empty stadiums and delaying the Super Bowl until the end of February.