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Vaccinated fans only for ISSA competitions

High school sports’ governing body to develop COVID database

Published:Sunday | August 22, 2021 | 12:05 AMRobert Bailey - Gleaner Writer
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Fans celebrate at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships at the the National Stadium in Kingston on Saturday, March 30, 2019. ISSA said it is developing a database for fans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and only
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Fans celebrate at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships at the the National Stadium in Kingston on Saturday, March 30, 2019. ISSA said it is developing a database for fans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and only those spectators will be allowed entry to its competitions.
Fans sitting in the grandstand at the National Stadium look on as Lenworth Hyde (right), head coach, Clarendon College, celebrate their Olivier Shield victory over Kingston College.
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Fans sitting in the grandstand at the National Stadium look on as Lenworth Hyde (right), head coach, Clarendon College, celebrate their Olivier Shield victory over Kingston College.
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PRESIDENT OF the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), Keith Wellington, said his organisation is currently working on developing a database, which will allow for only fully vaccinated spectators to attend schoolboy football matches...

PRESIDENT OF the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), Keith Wellington, said his organisation is currently working on developing a database, which will allow for only fully vaccinated spectators to attend schoolboy football matches this season.

“The plan is that we are going to introduce a fan registration system where we are going to help the schools to establish a database with their fans registered and we will provide IDs (identification cards) for the fans, and then what we are going to do is to have a vaccination ID different,” said Wellington.

“Persons who can prove that they are vaccinated, we would give them an ID certifying them as vaccinated, and if we are allowed fans then only vaccinated fans would be coming in, and theses fans would also be coming based on their schoolboy football fan registration ID, which would indicated whether or not they are vaccinated,” he further explained.

“ISSA’s schoolboy football competitions probably carry the biggest sporting fan base in the country in terms of fans going out to watch the competition, and so I think we would be providing leadership where that is concerned,” Wellington said.

The 2020 season was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it 21 months since the last competitive schoolboy football game was played in the island. That was the 2019 Olivier Shield final between rural daCosta Cup champions Clarendon College and Corporate Area Manning Cup winners Kingston College.

third surge

Jamaica has been experiencing a third surge of the COVID-19 disease, which has forced the Government to tighten its restrictions after the highly contagious variant, Delta, was confirmed on the island this week. The country has recorded 59,932 cases as of Thursday, while 1,342 persons have died from the disease locally, according to Ministry of Health and Wellness figures released the same day.

Wellington said that they are currently working with all the various stakeholders as they seek to restart the competition in October. He pointed out that this new COVID-19 fan database could also be extended to spectators attending the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Champs next year.

“We are taking one step at a time and so schoolboy football is the next thing on our agenda and we want to work with that. Obviously, if it works well, then we would want to introduce it in our other competitions, especially come Champs next year,” Wellington said.

Stewart Jacobs, vice-president of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica, has lauded ISSA for this move, which he said will prevent students from contracting the deadly virus.

“We are fully behind it because it is the responsible thing for ISSA to do at this time to ensure that they continue to protect student athletes as well as the officials’ participation at any school sporting event,” said Jacobs.

robert.bailey@gleanerjm.com