BOCA RATON – Florida Atlantic will have to wait at least one more week to play football.
FAU’s season-opening contest at Georgia Southern scheduled to kick off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. has been postponed amid a COVID-19 outbreak within the Owls football team. At the moment there is no makeup date.
A source tells OwlAccess.com that Thursday’s COVID-19 tests of football players and staff yielded another batch of positive tests.
On Tuesday FAU learned of 11 positive COVID-19 tests among its players. Sources tell OwlAccess.com that more than half of the projected defensive starters are among the 11. Thursday’s primarily included even more defensive players.
FAU retested the entire team and its support staff on Tuesday but the results weren’t immediately announced. In compliance with Conference USA protocol, that same group was also scheduled to undergo another set of tests on Thursday.
Upon receipt of the positive test results, the university’s Student Health Services department began conducting contact tracing, which likely led to more players being quarantined.
In an email, a university spokesperson said FAU is following guidelines issued by the CDC which state that a person – student, coach or staffer – is to be quarantined if that person was within six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more from a period dating two days prior to the onset of the infected person’s illness or positive test.
Georgia Southern had 33 players miss last week’s season-opener against Campbell because of either COVID-19, suspension or coach’s decision. On Monday Eagles coach Chad Lunsford said the majority of those players missed the game because they were identified as at-risk following contact tracing.
FAU’s first two games of the season, at Minnesota and against Stony Brook, were already canceled because of COVID-19 related concerns.
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