Florida Gators Report 5 New Positive Football COVID-19 Cases
Note: This story has been edited to more accurately reflect the number of new cases and total cases of COVID-19 surrounding Florida athletics. The university athletic association has reported five new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total count for October up to six cases.
The Florida Gators have reported five new cases of COVID-19 cases among the football team and the entire athletics department since last week's update, with test results through Monday, Oct. 12th.
Below, you can find Florida's entire testing update since athletes began returning to campus on May 26th.
Since Athletes Returned to Campus on May 26th
Total Tests on Campus: 3,491
Total Positives on Campus: 118
Total Tests for October: 750
Total Positives for October: 6
Since Football Athletes Returned to Campus on May 26th
Total Tests on Campus: 1796
Total Positives on Campus: 37
Total Tests for October: 523
Total Positives for October: 6
Last week, the Gators football team reported just one new positive test for COVID-19, while reporting six across all athletics at the program this week. Over the course of the season, Florida has done its job in protecting its athletes and becoming one of the leading follow-by-example schools in the nation in handling this pandemic.
While Florida has done its job during the season, as the week has gone on more players have become COVID-19-positive, resulting in this latest outbreak.
When players returned to sports, an emphasis was placed on the team's ability to be responsible, and it appeared through three weeks of the season everything was going off without a hitch. However, things now have changed given the most-recent results.
While Florida will report when an athlete does test positive, they, nor anyone else, will not be reporting who the athlete that tested positive is, for the sake of privacy. Gators head coach Dan Mullen stated as such last week when discussing his new stance on how he will go about talking injuries for the duration of the year.
On Monday, Mullen was once again asked about his stance of wanting The Swamp to be packed to full capacity. He did not back off of his post-game comments, instead stating that he's simply been "preparing for LSU."
"But, I mean 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, you know, I think we're a model of safety of what we've been doing during this time period," said Mullen.
The Gators will have to hope they continue to act responsibly as an outbreak, of course, could cause a pause in the action as we have already seen with Notre Dame in college football and the Tennessee Titans in the NFL.
Florida is set to play host to the LSU Tigers on Saturday, a game in which has changed from its previously set time of 3:30 p.m. ET., at The Swamp, to now 4:00 p.m. ET.
