I don't know if they will or not, but the data on myocarditis has flipped completely from when they instituted that mandate.
https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/28/big-ten-covid-protocol-21-days-heart-screening
In the same week that the 21-day policy ensnared one of the league’s high-profile players, some of the nation’s most acclaimed sports cardiologists published a revealing paper that may undermine the conference’s return-to-play rule less than two months after its adoption.
The nine-page report, heralded by physicians across the country, indicates that doctors are finding so few heart abnormalities in COVID-positive athletes that
they are no longer recommending any cardiac screenings for those who experienced mild symptoms or no symptoms.
As recently as September, cardiologists were mostly recommending full-scale heart screenings in the absence of workable data—what some might call an appropriate, cautious approach to a novel virus’s impacts on such a significant organ.
With more data, research and experience, they are reversing course. It speaks to the greater theme of a COVID world: Everything is fluid.
“We’re building the ship as we sail,” says Matthew Martinez, a co-author of the paper and the medical director of sports cardiology at Atlantic Health System in New Jersey who is the league cardiologist for Major League Soccer.
“The vast majority of athletes are falling into the asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic group. The yield and events [of heart abnormalities] are small based on limited outcome data—very, very small,” Martinez said in an interview Monday. “We are seeing that in the NCAA and also professional sports.”
According to the data, he estimates that well less than 1% of COVID-positive athletes who experience mild or no symptoms are showing cardiac issues such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart found in some post-virus patients.
Out of hundreds of college athletes, doctors are finding heart abnormalities in the single digits, “if we’re finding them at all,” he says.
The report
was published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a peer-reviewed medical publication that’s in its 132nd year and is held in high esteem among medical industry experts. Sports cardiologists contacted this week described Monday’s article as excellent and sound, but cautioned that data is still incomplete. A full study is expected later this fall when more numbers are crunched.
“The article is trying to restore some semblance of order to the universe with a rationale approach,” says Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who briefed both the Big 12 and Conference USA in August regarding the
myocarditis scare that swept across college sports.
“When we made that original decision to postpone, myocarditis was everywhere in the news,” says Morton Schapiro, Northwestern’s president and the chair of the league’s highest policy-making body of chancellors and presidents. “That is and was very scary. I don’t know that if it hadn’t been for myocarditis whether the medical professionals would have recommended a different course of action.”