Football player tests positive for COVID-19 ahead of 2020 season opener
On the same day the team arrived in Colorado for Saturday’s season opener, UCLA Athletics announced one UCLA football player tested positive for COVID-19. (Kanishka Mehra/Photo editor)
By Sam Connon
Nov. 6, 2020 8:10 p.m.
A UCLA football player has tested positive for COVID-19, the athletic department released in its weekly testing update Friday night.
The unidentified player accounted for the only positive result out of 461 polymerase chain reaction and 787 antigen tests administered by UCLA Athletics in the past week. The player is a defensive role player and no other Bruins have been quarantined after contact tracing, the Los Angeles Times’ Ben Bolch reports.
It was not specified when in the week the positive test occurred, but coach Chip Kelly told the media Wednesday morning that there were no players in quarantine at that time.
The Pac-12 has not made a statement on the status of Saturday’s game between UCLA and Colorado set to kick off at 4 p.m. in Boulder. The conference approved California and Utah’s requests to cancel their season openers against Washington and Arizona, respectively, because of recent positive COVID-19 tests that prevented them from having the minimum number of scholarship players available for the games.
The new positive test result comes one week after another coronavirus scare in the program, when UCLA Athletics announced a football player had received a positive antigen test. That test was confirmed as a false positive with an ensuing PCR test soon after.
Two additional positive tests within the UCLA Athletics community were reported in the update as well – one from the rowing team and another from Athletics’ support staff – but those tests were not conducted by the department. Per department protocol, those individuals will isolate for 10 days unless it is designated as a false positive, and anyone who is contact traced to them will isolate for 14 days.
UCLA Athletics released a statement earlier Friday claiming it would not specify the reason for a particular player missing a game or practice for the rest of the reason, unless express consent is given by the player.
UCLA, along with new Athletics Director Martin Jarmond, boarded its flight to Denver just before 2 p.m. on Friday afternoon and touched down roughly two hours later. Every player, team employee and airport worker caught on camera during the trip was wearing a mask.
Every player will once again take antigen and PCR tests Saturday prior to the game, should it continue as scheduled.
