Blue and Gold Illustrated

Oct. 10, 2020

Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football

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18 OCT. 10, 2020 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY PATRICK ENGEL T he six sentences of Notre Dame's Sept. 28 press release made clear why the Irish did not schedule the makeup game with Wake Forest a week later on a mutual open date. They would have been missing a third of their roster for that pos- sible Oct. 3 game due to players in COVID-19 protocols. That number would have been nearly identical had they played the game as sched- uled Sept. 26. Notre Dame announced it had 39 players caught in COVID-19 pro- tocols out of 118 on the roster. Of those 39, 18 players tested positive for COVID-19 between Sept. 22 and Sept. 27 and were put into isolation, bringing the total in isolation to 25 after seven others tested positive on Sept. 21. There were 14 others placed in quarantine due to contact tracing. The numbers are jarring to read, but not entirely surprising to see. They had been trending in a worri- some direction the prior week. Notre Dame played South Florida Sept. 19 with 10 players out due to COVID-19 protocols, four of them a result of positive tests. Two days later, updated test results brought the total number of players sidelined to 23, including seven new positives, and triggered the post- ponement of the game at Wake For- est. All football activities except for Zoom meetings were paused. "I don't think there was a whole lot of debate, and it was both in terms of the number of players impacted and the need to get a handle on to what extent the rest of the team was impacted," said Dr. Mark Fox, the St. Joseph County (Ind.) deputy public health officer who is consulted on all team virus-related decisions. As of Sept. 28, the other two-thirds of the roster had restarted condition- ing activities, which Fox deemed ap- propriate. They'll be short-handed for a little while. Per the ACC's pro- tocols, players identified through contact tracing must quarantine for 14 days, while those who test posi- tive must isolate for 10. IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM Before Notre Dame planned to re- sume practice on Sept. 30, its task was to identify what led to the out- break and tweak the procedures. They centered their focus on two areas: thinning capacity in the locker SCREECHING TO A HALT Notre Dame football's postponed game at Wake Forest comes amid an outbreak that has reached 25 active cases Notre Dame will have three weeks in between games after postponing its Sept. 26 contest at Wake Forest due to a COVID-19 outbreak within the team. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS

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