Gators Report Six Football COVID-19 Cases, Several Sports Pause Activity
A week after announcing its first positive case of COVID-19 since July, the Florida Gators have had an outbreak of coronavirus within the football team and athletic department according to numbers through September 14th released by the school.
Florida has reported seven cases of COVID-19 across 230 tests from the football team in the month of September, up six from last week, with 68 positives from 528 tests across athletics. All athletic activity has been postponed for Florida's lacrosse and baseball team, with lacrosse reporting 31 cases and baseball offering another 15 as of Monday.
The Gators' soccer team also postponed its season-opening game against Missouri, which was originally set for Friday. Three soccer players tested positive which led to widespread quarantines across the team, per the school.
The university has dispersed 1,564 total tests among athletes since they began to return to campus on May 26th.
Head coach Dan Mullen hinted at an uptick in cases when speaking with the media on Monday, calling it a "minor" spike.
"We're working a lot with all our local health officials right now," said Mullen. We'll have a couple more guys that have tested positive. We've also, right now, I think we might have some false positives that we've identified. That’s a huge concern."
Mullen would not get into specifics regarding the false positives, given legal issues that would surround providing details, but he made note that the university has identified false positives surrounding asymptomatic players who come back with multiple negative tests along with at least one test that came back false-positive.
"I give a lot of credit to our players," said Mullen. "They’ve done an amazing job, I think, obviously anytime you infuse whatever 50,000 students on a campus you’re going to have a spike."
