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BREAKING: Gators football put on hold due to COVID-19 outbreak after 19 players test positive
There have been five new positive COVID-19 tests on the Florida football team this week as of Monday. In last week’s testing update, the team reported just one case during the first week of October.
Despite the uptick in cases, the positive test rate remains relatively low, with 1.1 percent of tests returning positive results this month.
According to the University of Florida Athletic Association, all the positive cases so far this month have been on the football team, which accounts for the bulk (nearly 70 percent) of athletes being tested.
Florida coach Dan Mullen, who said after Florida’s loss to Texas A&M that he would like to see The Swamp at full capacity for this weekend’s game against LSU (and later declined an opportunity to back off those comments), praised the safety precautions taken by the program on Monday.
“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.
“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.”
It’s unclear what impact, if any, these positive cases will have on Florida’s game against LSU. Vanderbilt canceled its game this weekend against Missouri, citing a number of available scholarship players below the required 53.
The Gators aren’t looking at an outbreak of that scale though, at least at this time, and it appears the game against the Tigers will go on as scheduled.
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