London: ECB Chief ECB Tom Harrison on Thursday said strict bio-bubbles would not be charged for the upcoming Indian-English test series despite some Covid-19 cases on both teams in leading up to the contest starting 4.
Two positive cases detected in camps -Kamp India in front of their training match in Durham while England had to coat the rear squad in the series against Pakistan after finding several positive cases on the squad after Sri Lanka.
In general, cases also increased in the UK with more than 42,000 infections reported on Wednesday.
Harrison felt other players and stakeholders had to learn to live with Covid-19.
“We were in a different scenario up to 12 months ago or even six months ago really in connection with how we handled it with Covid.
We really try to learn how we live with it and create a safe environment for conflicting people With a safe bio-environment, “Harrison said as quoted by CricBuzz.
“There is a big difference between the two.
The players have just been fed up with bio-security and bubbles and the language we have used.
It has a detrimental impact on mental health for players, time away from family.
We just can’t operate such an environment In the future.
“We must learn to overcome Covid.
We will live with it now for the future that can be estimated so mitigation is a word that is contrary to prevention.
We think we have built enough protocols now only to try and reduce the impact of frankly inevitable infections.
“Harrison said it was important to ensure that all squad did not need to be replaced as happened in the series against Pakistan.” I think that’s where we try to make sure we don’t have an instance where the whole team is removed from circulation because one or two local infections.
“So we work very hard to ensure the protocols are there for the rest of the season.
We have communicated this protocol to various camps and various teams and also the international and district environment,” Harrison said.
Even close contact must be isolated for 10 days in accordance with government guidelines.
Can the time period be reduced? “We talk to the government all the time.
The reality is that the guidelines are determined by the health of the British community so that we do not have the ability to create new guidelines only for cricket which is not subject to sanctions by PHE or the central government.” We live with current guidelines but it cannot be operated in the context of the guideline to have a successful environment, “he added.