GAINESVILLE, Fla. — No. 10 Florida will have to proceed cautiously with its COVID-19 protocols following a recent miniature outbreak of the virus on the football team. The Gators reported one positive case on the football team in its testing update released a week ago but now have announced five additional positives in this week’s update.
That’s concerning news for the Gators following the postponement of the first SEC game this fall, with the league moving the Missouri-Vanderbilt game this week back to Dec. 12 thanks to an outbreak at Vanderbilt.
Still, Florida has had previous miniature outbreaks on the team and been able to stamp out the virus before it became an issue that might cancel or postpone games.
The Gators had six active COVID-19 cases in their testing update on Sept. 15, just a week and a half before the season began. Yet there were only a few players who were out for the season opener due to quarantining and contact-tracing measures against Ole Miss on Sept. 26.
“I’ll be honest, I think if you look at what we’ve been able to do, the safety precautions we have that our players have followed, our coaches follow, our staff follows, I think we’re a model of safety of what we’ve been doing during this time period,” coach Dan Mullen said. “So, I’m really proud of how we’ve handled everything and how safe we’ve been with everything we’re doing and all the precautions we’ve had in place during this time.”
The latest round of testing updates does mean that Florida will likely be short-handed for its game against LSU this weekend, though.
The Gators have now reported six positive COVID-19 cases on the football team on 523 total tests in the month of October.
“We’ve been playing short-handed defensively,” Mullen said. “We’re hoping to get some guys back this week. But, I mean, who knows? As you know this is going to be a really, really unique year that you’re juggling a bunch of different things. So hopefully we have some guys back this week that will play. I don’t know.
“One of the things is you put all these gameplans together, and like you were saying, we put guys in the right position. I find out about Thursday night at 11:30 p.m. who is probably going to be playing in the game. That can always change on Friday, someone gets the sniffles, so … not to make light of it but like all the sudden someone has, especially this time of year you got allergies, you have colds coming and now we’re rushing to get tests done on Friday and Saturday morning. So that makes it different.”
While the Florida football team has dealt with the virus this month, other teams within the athletics program have not. The Gators have issued 197 total tests to athletes in other sports this month without returning a single positive result.
