HARRY Kewell hopes the “outlet” of football can continue amid rising Covid-19 infections but is ready for the EFL season to be suddenly halted.

The campaign is currently continuing as planned with the league having introduced mandatory twice-weekly testing this week. Scottish football below the Championship was yesterday put on hold with large parts of the non-league pyramid also suspended.

But the EFL is carrying on as things stand, something Kewell is keeping his fingers crossed can remain the case.

“We’re hearing about all these cases flying about and it’s not good,” said the

Latics boss, who missed three games earlier this season after testing positive for coronavirus.

“We want to get it under control, we want to make sure it’s a safe place for players to be able to come in and train and do their job.

“Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s a big question about why football should keep going. But football’s an outlet for a lot of people to be able to watch.

“I have to thank my medical staff, we’ve done all the protocols strictly by the book.

“We’ve worked hard. It is tiresome and it is hard work to stay at his level of how we’re treating Covid. I take my hat off to the medical staff because they don’t give us a rest.

“They’re constantly on us and if we’re not doing it right they will pull us out and say ‘you can’t have him’. We’re doing everything right.”

Kewell, whose squad all tested negative ahead of the weekend FA Cup defeat against Bournemouth, is well aware though that with talk of the Government further tightening restrictions, the immediate future of his side’s season is not top of the Covid agenda.

“The most important thing is the safety not just of players but wider society,” he said.

“We have to control what’s going on out there in the rest of the world. Unfortunately as much as we love football, we’ve got to be guided by the Government and the EFL and we’ve got to make sure we abide by the rules.

“If we abide by the rules, it will go away quicker and then we can get back to normality.”

While the season continues, clubs are having to balance ever-changing schedules with games being called off at short notice and hastily rearranged.

Kewell though believes that is where professionalism will shine through.

“It’s a bit like what happened down at Forest Green (when the game was abandoned after 58 minutes),” he said.

“I was struggling to understand some of the Forest Green players when they were saying ‘let’s just play, let’s just play, you don’t want to come back here on a Tuesday’.

“It’s your job, you’ve got to be professional. You’ve got to work until you’re told you can’t do it anymore.

“We’re preparing for every single game the exact same way knowing that at any given moment it could be shut down.

“You can’t just think about the possibility of that happening because you’re missing out on valuable work.

“We plan as if nothing is happening. If something evolves then we’ll just have to deal with it.

“In the time that we live in at the moment you’ve got to be able to adapt.”