Drew Brees Says 'American People Need Sports Right Now' Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees appeared on The Ellen Show on Wednesday and said he believes "the American people need sports right now" amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"That's typically something that's really brought us through a lot of tough situations throughout our country. I think people have been able to lean on their local sports teams or national teams to just unite them and get their minds off the challenges of daily life or daily struggle. We don't even have that right now, and I think that's another reason why this is so tough. And obviously we hope that football can be back to normal—or this can be back to normal so that we can play real football."

It remains unclear when sports leagues in the United States will resume playing, with social distancing guidelines in place through April. The fear of lifting those precautionary measures too soon is that a possible second wave of the coronavirus could sweep through the country, causing another shutdown.

"If people start going out again and socially interacting, we could see a really acute second wave," White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx said, per Peter Szekely and Maria Caspani of Reuters.

To date, the United States has 402,923 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, per CNN.com, nearly three times as many as any other country, though it's possible there are more cases given a lack of testing. There have been 13,007 deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States and 85,397 worldwide. 

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Bleacher Report's David Gardner interviews athletes and other sports figures for the podcast How to Survive Without Sports.