MONTEGO BAY, St James — There are concerns that the expected fourth wave of the novel coronavirus pandemic could affect the end of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) football competition, should there be another national lockdown.

The first two rounds of the Manning and daCosta cup competitions have been completed with the semi-finals and finals set to be played in January as well as the knock-out competitions — the Walker Cup and Ben Francis Cup and the ISSA Champions Cup.

Medical experts are, however, anticipating a fourth round of elevated numbers of infections and hospitalisation, especially with the newest variant, Omicron, expected to be here by then.

Linvern Wright, chairman of the daCosta Cup committee, said their focus was on the completion of the season and if they had to put in more protocols to ensure the welfare of those involved, they would do so.

“I don’t know that we can predict anything right now,” he told the Jamaica Observer, “but we have every intention to have them. We have done the scheduling already and we just hope that COVID will allow us in January.”

Wright added: “As things stand now, we plan to go ahead. Right now we are playing with all the COVID protocols in place just the same now and if it means we have to play totally without spectators, I think those are the proposals where that is concerned.”

After playing the first round without spectators, ISSA allowed a limited number of supporters for the second and there are plans to increase the numbers for the next round.

“Maybe the big difference was that in January we wanted to have some more fans, so if Omicron won’t allow that, and we would have to understand that, but the important thing is we want the games played and to finish up the competition in January,” Wright noted.

There were reports of fans getting into a few venues for the first round games and Wright reported that ISSA had managed to tighten things up as the season progressed.

“For the second round I think most things have gone the way we wanted in terms of crowd control. It was much better in the first round and we are just looking forward to tweaking things for the final round to ensure that the commitments we have made in relation to COVID-19 protocols are actually held to,” he said.

“We ensure that we are much better in terms of managing so that we can be an example to others and also feel proud of how we have managed over the season.”

The ISSA official attributed fans getting into venues as “some people who were over enthusiastic and we understand that, but it had to do with the venues that we had. But by the second round we used the best venues that we had and it worked out in terms of security, so we are happy with that.”

He does not expect any breaches come January.

“It is a matter of the quality of the venues, so we are moving to ensure that the venues are of even better quality because as you know, as the teams are reduced we will have fewer venues, we will have better venues and that means we will have better control, more ISSA executives will be on hand to oversee and that is what we are seeking to do,” he explained.