The Oregon Ducks football program got some good news Tuesday when their five players who tested positive for COVID-19 Saturday night were allowed to return to the program and resume practice.
The Ducks were cleared as a program for full practice on Tuesday and held their first regular, full practice since Saturday’s test in the morning.
“They were deemed to be false-positives. We have resumed normal operations,” said Mario Cristobal Tuesday evening.
The school announced that the five players were given two separate PCR tests from independent labs, and all tests came back negative. The students were then later cleared by Oregon’s medical staff and the local health authority to be removed from isolation and return to the team to participate in fall camp.
“Everything was followed to the T, that’s what we did. Of course, it makes you a little impatient,” said Cristobal. “You want to get going right away, but it took about a day.”
Oregon issued a team-wide PCR test on Sunday as planned, and then continued to test the remaining student-athletes on Monday and Tuesday with daily antigen testing. All results were negative.
Saturday was supposed to be a day in which the Ducks held their second scrimmage of fall camp under the lights in an evening scrimmage. That obviously didn’t happen. Cristobal said the program was amped up for what Saturday was scheduled to be.
“Guys really wanted to play that night. There was a lot of juice, a lot of energy. A lot of get after it type of energy,” said Cristobal.
Oregon was planning on holding Sunday and Monday off so as to give the team rest for the upcoming final days of fall camp, and then begin prep for Stanford on November 7th. Cristobal noted the Ducks didn’t miss much time on the field because of the time waiting for the results and noted that on Monday evening the program held a very thorough walk-through for the players who were cleared.
Tuesday morning the Ducks were back on the field as an entire unit working towards getting ready for the season.
“We got after it. Today’s practice was a very long, thorough practice,” said Cristobal.
“Really pleased with how we responded.”
