CHICAGO — Hours after Big Ten announced football will take place in 2020, Gov. J.B. Pritzker continued his opposition to a fall start for postponed IHSA sports, including football.

Pritzker was joined for his Wednesday press conference by Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, as well as Dr. Michael Lin, an infectious disease expert at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

The trio’s consensus on the topic of allowing contact sports to happen as usual in the COVID-19 pandemic era: science doesn’t back that decision.

“I listen to the experts and follow data,” Pritzker said. “I’ve always promised to do that and I’ve always promised to be transparent about that, and I always will do that no matter the political pressure. Under no circumstances will I put children and their families at risk.”

A press conference attendee offered multiple statistics about a relative lack of COVID-19 cases among prep football and volleyball teams conducting summer camps. She added, “I don’t understand this science and data that you’re using.”

“I understand and I can appreciate the reaction you have to it,” said Pritzker, who didn’t offer any specific data other than, “But what I can tell you is that one of the reasons that Illinois has the lowest positivity rate among our neighboring states is because we’ve been very careful, because we’ve listened to the scientists.”

“We have some of the best scientists and doctors in the entire country in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker added. “I’ve been relying on that.”

When asked if there is a specific timeline along which Pritzker would permit high school contact sports to resume, he deferred to Ezike.

“As we get lower and lower positivity rates. As we have less community spread. As we learn more what the effects are in children,” said Ezike, who pointed to multisystem inflammatory syndrome and myocarditis as side effects that have been discovered in some children who contract COVID-19. The former side effect is a condition in which significant internal organs become inflamed, and the latter is an inflammation of the heart muscle.

“As we get all of the information and as we identify ways that we can try to treat or prevent those serious complications, as we see what thresholds for positivity might decrease the risk enough for sports to happen, high-risk sports,” Ezike continued, “we’re going to be assembling all of the information, using what’s happening in other settings as well, to try and make the most informed decisions.

“I am working with the IHSA. We all want the same thing, I feel like. We don’t want to pit anybody against each other. Nobody wants kids to sit on the sidelines.”

Lin, who began his portion of the press conference by noting he has two grade school-aged children who typically participate in contact sports, said “there’s no practical way to prevent outbreaks from happening in sports such as football, with all the contact that is inherent in the sport.”

“Contact team sports such as football and hockey can become super-spreading events very easily,” Lin said. “Just one youth athlete showing up with the virus can start a chain reaction of spread that can quickly threaten an entire team.”

Lin and Pritzker both added the use of locker rooms, gymnasiums and vehicles for travel among teams offers additional concern, though Pritzker acknowledged that he’s aware athletes in non-contact sports also can use a locker room.

In addressing why sports such as high school football cannot happen when a 2020 Big Ten football season was approved Wednesday that includes two teams from Illinois — Illinois and Northwestern — Pritzker pointed to the abundance of precautions taken to create a safer situation and added that most high schools wouldn’t be able to match those efforts.

“These programs are operating with daily testing or in a league-created bubble or with facilities that allow for outsized social distancing,” Pritzker said. “When you’re talking about the Big Ten … much different. It just is because of the amount of testing, because of the amount of doctors that are available. … That’s not something that’s happening at the high school level.”

Colin Likas is the preps coordinator at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at clikas@news-gazette.com, or on Twitter at @clikasNG.