Less than two months ago, Barry Alvarez listened to conference medical experts in the Big Ten describe the labyrinth of heart-related screenings necessary to clear an athlete who has contracted COVID-19.
The athlete would need to jump through four proverbial hoops, all of them ensuring that the virus did not impact the heart, before returning to activity. They’d need a troponin blood test, which measures the level of cardiac-specific troponin in the blood to help detect heart injury. They would also need an EKG, which records electric signals in the body’s most important, blood-pumping muscle. In addition to that, they would need to be administered an Echocardiogram, which uses ultrasound to generate an outline of the heart’s movement.