As you can appreciate the situation around the coronavirus (COVID-19) has continued to develop quickly over the last 72hours.

Following the recent guidance from the UK & Scottish Government on the coronavirus (COVID-19), Team East Lothian AC will be suspending all scheduled training sessions and community sessions until further notice to minimise the risk to athletes/participants and their parents/guardians as well as the coaches leading these sessions.

We will be working with our coaching team to provide some at-home training sessions over this week to all our athletes – that will require a bit of creativity but will encourage everyone to stay fit and healthy during the coming weeks.

As you can appreciate, there is still some uncertainty in how long social distancing measures will be in place and how long TEL training squads will be disrupted, which also places some financial strain on the club. We will be continuing to support our coaching team during this period. In the short term, we will continue to collect April training fees as planned and we will be offering home training programmes service during that time. The Board of Trustees will be reviewing the situation if continues into May.

We appreciate that for some the current situation may put additional financial pressures on families and the access (hardship) fund to cover up to 75% of training fees will be opened up for March/April and anyone can access this offer by emailing clubofficer@teameastlothian.org.uk

We encourage everyone to follow current NHS advice and if any athlete or coach has associated symptoms of coronavirus:
• a high temperature – you feel hot to touch on your chest or back
• a new, continuous cough – this means you’ve started coughing repeatedly

Then you should self isolate for at least 14 days.

If you do have symptoms a bit of advice of when to start getting active again. The current clinical advice from the British Athletics medical team suggests that day 5-7 after the onset of symptoms is when patients are most at risk of developing more severe respiratory complications. It is being recommended that if you develop symptoms, self-isolate and do not train for at least 10 days, even if you are starting to feel better at around Day 4-5. As you know this is when many athletes consider an easy run or training session after cold-like symptoms. Please do not train at all if you contract this virus and take the recommended rest for at least 10 days and until complete symptom resolution.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back to training when it is best to do so!

Team East Lothian Board of Trustees 
• NHS information about risks, symptoms and avoiding the spread of the virus is available online: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/