SPORT IRELAND WILL be forced to scale back its anti-doping operations amid the outbreak of the coronavirus, but the national body will continue to test athletes in its testing pool while taking appropriate measures to protect the health of both the athlete and sample-collection personnel.

The organisation has reviewed its testing programme and will adhere to all HSE and statutory advice in a bid to curtail the spread of COVID-19 in Ireland, but the drug-testing of registered athletes won’t grind to a total halt in spite of the restrictive circumstances.

Athletes in its Registered Testing Pool will still be required to update their whereabouts information as per usual, and Sport Ireland will “very closely monitor” the travel of both athlete and anti-doping personnel over fortnightly periods in a bid to minimise risk to both parties.

Dr Una May, director of participation and ethics at Sport Ireland, told The42: “Look, obviously, there isn’t going to be as much testing, and clearly, there isn’t going to be in-competition testing because there’s no competition. But we’re not stopping altogether — I’ll put it that way.

We are scaling back the testing but we are continuing to do testing where it’s a priority, where it’s in line with risk-assessment or any intelligence we’ve received or anything like that.

“So, we’re not ruling it out completely by any means”, Dr May added, “but where we are testing, we’re taking all of the necessary precautions and being extremely careful in how we do it. We’re following all of the HSE guidelines.

You have to make sure all the appropriate protections are in place — the social distancing, the hand-washing; all of the guidelines that are out there will be followed. We have to be sure that the doping-control personnel are not also directly handling the equipment that the athlete has handled — that they make sure they’re wearing gloves wherever there’s a necessity to handle equipment in any way.

“There are multiple things that can be done. We’ll be making sure that we’re very closely monitoring any travel that anybody has done in the last 14 days — both sample-collection personnel and athletes — and if, for any reason, an athlete is in a position where they have to self-isolate, that they’ve notified us of that.

“We’re taking all of these things into consideration and planning accordingly.”

Dr Una May. Bryan Keane / INPHO Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO

UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) will take similar precautionary measures in the weeks or months ahead.

USADA will predominantly test still-in-competition athletes as well as those preparing for Tokyo 2020.

“Effective immediately, USADA will focus only on mission-critical testing of athletes in sports still competing, and as absolutely needed for those preparing for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games to ensure their rights are upheld and their reputations protected,” the American anti-doping body said in a statement on Wednesday.

UKAD, meanwhile, confirmed there will be “a significant reduction” made to their anti-doping programme during the coronavirus crisis, confirming that it will “give precedence to health and welfare and act responsibly in line with Government advice during this unprecedented time”.