Tag: contact tracing

Cowboys working virtually ahead of Week 17 finale due to positive COVID test

The Cowboys have had to shut down in-person practice ahead of their regular season finale.

The Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants are both well under .500 but still with a chance to win the whole shebang going into Week 17. The two division rivals will square off Sunday afternoon with the victor still capable of an NFC East crown should Washington falter on Sunday Night Football. Preparing for the opponent isn’t the only thing each team is dealing with, as positive COVID-19 testing has impacted business as not-close-to-usual yet again this season.

While the Giants are dealing with positive tests among their coaches, Dallas has had at least one player test positive recently. Head coach Mike McCarthy has announced that Dallas will be handling preparation for the game virtually as contact tracing plays out.

Dallas is scheduled to fly to New York on Saturday ahead of their contest. For now.

The Cowboys have had only a handful of postive tests over the course of the season, but nothing like what some other organizations have had to deal with. Most notably, quarterback Andy Dalton tested positive while he was shelved due to a concussion suffered in the first game against Washington. He missed two starts ahead of the Cowboys’ bye week in total. Other active players have been placed on the list for close contacts, such as Tyrone Crawford and Chidobe Awuzie.

The Cowboys saw their game against the Baltimore Ravens postponed five days due to an outbreak that team suffered the week of Thanksgiving.

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ACC Will Have Basketball Teams Wear GPS Devices for Contact Tracing

By anyone’s standards, this has been a rough year for college football as far as playing scheduled games.

By anyone’s standards, this has been a rough year for college football as far as playing scheduled games. Perhaps that’s why the ACC doesn’t want to take chances as far as its basketball season. With COVID-19 cases forcing entire football teams to quarantine, the conference is hoping to avoid that for basketball.

For the 2020-21 season, the ACC will have members of all men’s and women’s basketball teams use wearable GPS devices for both games and practices. The idea is to measure exposure to players, staff and opponents who might be infectious. This would allow teams to make quarantine decisions for individuals instead of everybody, which is required without that data. At minimum, this will be required for all conference games.

Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner only sees good things coming out of this:

“Instead of saying ‘We’ve all got to shut down,’ — you don’t want to shut down — but maybe it’s two or three (players) and not an entire team. I think it’s a real game-changer. It’s a real positive step.”

With all of the games that go into a college basketball season, there is even less room for error compared to football. Forcing an entire team to quarantine for two weeks would take a big bite out of its schedule. It’s simply not an option. Props to the ACC for taking this step and improving its chances to have as complete as season as possible.

News: Cowboys staff enters bubble, Colombo fired in NY, Emmitt’s salute to service

Also, the Cowboys get two off the Reserve/COVID list, and DeMarcus Lawrence promises a better showing than the team gave a month ago.

COVID-19 dominates the Cowboys’ headlines just days before their Week 11 trip to Minnesota. Just as two players come off the virus watch list, the Dallas coaching staff takes up residence in the posh hotel next to the team’s headquarters. This comes as the league announces that all teams will operate under stricter protocols for the rest of 2020. But those measures only help player and coach safety; now eight fans who have tested positive report that they had recently been in attendance at AT&T Stadium for Cowboys home games. Uncertain times indeed as the league heads into the home stretch of this surreal season.

On the field, DeMarcus Lawrence is promising better things than the team showed even last month. The Cowboys’ injury report shows only two players not participating in the Wednesday session, and Chidobe Awuzie is set to finally make his anticipated return to action. A former Cowboy gets his pink slip from Big Blue, a team icon reaches out to salute a retired serviceman, and there’s still a decent chance that the 2-7 Cowboys could be leading the NFC East in less than two weeks’ time. Here’s the News and Notes.

Catholics vs. COVID: Notre Dame football outbreak swells

Just how big was the COVID-19 outbreak for Notre Dame football last week? We have the disturbing numbers here.

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As we’re all aware, last week’s scheduled Notre Dame game against Wake Forest was postponed because of a COVID-19 outbreak on the Fighting Irish football team.  Now we’ve got details as to just how many cases there were with Notre Dame football players.

  • Of the 273 tests administered to members of the football team last week, 18 came back positive.  Those 18 players are all in quarantine with seven of them already having been so due to contact tracing.
  • As of Monday, 25 Notre Dame football players remain in isolation while another 14 remain in quarantine as a result of contact tracing.
  • The Notre Dame football team has resumed conditioning activities and will continue to adhere to testing protocols and procedures throughout the week and season.

My first thought upon reading this release was simply: “WOW!”.

We’ve been used to seeing a pair of players here or a few more there but when you see a total of 39 players getting set either in isolation or in quarantine it’s incredibly eye-opening.

After seeing the numbers it makes a lot more sense as to why the game against Wake Forest was moved back to December so quickly and not moved to this coming weekend when both Notre Dame and Wake Forest were scheduled to be off.

Here’s to obviously hoping the best for all those infected most importantly, and then to hoping there isn’t a postponement or delay for the Florida State game that is currently scheduled for October 10 at Notre Dame Stadium.

 

Daily tests, proximity trackers among new COVID-19 protocols for Cowboys camp

The NFL and players union agreed to protocols that will dictate the frequency of player testing as the proposed 2020 season nears.

Even attempting to play a football season during a global pandemic was always going to require a significant testing plan for players, coaches, and team personnel. That plan looks to finally be in place, just hours before Cowboys rookies were set to report to the Star in Frisco.

The NFL and NFL Players Association came to an agreement on testing protocols Monday afternoon. According to USA Today‘s Jori Epstein, “players, coaches, and designated staff who interact with them will undergo COVID-19 testing daily throughout the first two weeks of training camp.” Epstein’s report cites confirmation by league Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills.

The plan provides for daily tests for the first two weeks of camp, but specifies that testing frequency could drop if certain positivity benchmarks are achieved.

“The original plan had been to test every other day,” notes Cowboys staff writer David Helman, “but many prominent players took to social media over the weekend to question the league’s protocols.” The daily testing with an option to eventually downshift to every other day appears to be one of the compromises reached during a round of conference calls between the two sides.

Players will notably be required to test negative more than once before taking part in team activities or even entering the club’s facilities.

How team personnel move throughout their facilities while practicing and conducting official business has been left up to the individual clubs. All 32 organizations were required to submit detailed infectious disease emergency response (IDER) plans that separated personnel into tiers and laid out who could be where and when during team activities.

Teams will “require daily temperature screening, symptom monitoring, social distancing, and masks,” but Epstein points out that players will also wear “Apple Watch-like” proximity trackers to help with contact tracing when a test comes back positive.

 

“If a player tests positive but has no symptoms,” writes NFL.com columnist Judy Battista, “he can return to the facility 10 days after the initial positive test or if he receives two consecutive negative tests within five days of the initial positive test. If the player has a positive test and symptoms, he can return after at least 10 days have passed since the symptoms first appeared and at least 72 hours have passed since he last experienced symptoms.”

Despite all these safeguards and precautions, Dr. Sills emphasized that it will be up to players and staff to modify their typical behavior, both at the team facilities and away from it, to mitigate the risk of infection and minimize spread.

“We cannot test our way to safety,” Sills said.

But as of now anyway, it appears that the league can test its way to the start of training camp.

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