Ioannidis & WFT Officially in COVID World

The Washington Football Team is dealing with a player testing positive for COVID for the first time since early in training camp. As if the season wasn't difficult enough.

ASHBURN, Va. - The Washington Football Team has been able to handle and control COVID-19 this year a lot better than they have the first halves of games.

Even Tuesday, it didn't appear that the walls were coming crashing down at the Inova Sports Performance Center.

Matt Ioannidis was placed on the Reserve/COVID-19 list and via a statement by the team, it was because of a positive test for an unnamed player. 

Ioannidis is on injured reserve and out for the year. It's the first positive test since Logan Thomas, early in training camp.

This is the best possible news.

In normal years, those players that are on injured reserve for the season are rarely in the building during the year because the medical staff has way too many players to deal with already from a treatment perspective.

This year, our understanding is that Ioannidis, and other players on IR, still have to come to the facility on a daily basis to perform COVID testing as part of the protocol. So it's possible that Ioannidis is staying in the building to be with his teammates and maybe participate in meetings.

However, as of early Wednesday morning, no other players have been identified publicly as "close contacts" by the NFL tracking system, which is hopefully continued good news, all things considered.

If another player is determined to be a close contact, that player much go on the COVID list as well and subject to quarantine.

The team said "the player immediately self-isolated and the contact tracing data was evaluated. All of the player’s close contacts have been told to quarantine."

Being that nobody else was put on the list after contact data was evaluated, the indication is that Ioannidis wasn't significantly close to anyone in the building.

Still the team announced that they would enter "intensive protocols" and that all meetings would be held virtually with limited access to the team facility granted to the players.

Washington is scheduled to practice this week at the facility, which was in question based on the original statement.

Per Washington Football PR, the team will have a shortened individual period and 'practice will be scaled back' due to COVID-19 protocols.

This is probably not going to be the last positive result but so far, so good for the Washington Football Team.