West Virginia football has increase in positive COVID-19 cases

Nobody knows what the future will hold when it comes to the potential of college football this fall but at West Virginia the impact of COVID-19 has certainly been felt with testing results.

The Mountaineers have seen the number of positive tests jump from nine to 28 as the football program is into their first week of the required workouts with coaches. All individuals entered self-isolation for 14 days at the time of their positive result and contact tracing was initiated as well.

That is an increase, but one that has been mirrored in many college football programs across the nation.

There seems to be less confidence nationally that college football will be played in the fall and several other conferences have already made the decision to move to only conference games or move it to the spring. That clearly has not been the case at West Virginia, but this news does raise some eyebrows.

Several of those other programs across the country have been forced to suspend workouts for the time being. At West Virginia, the Mountaineers already elected to postpone the start of voluntary men’s and women’s basketball workouts but to date that hasn’t been the case with the football program.

Currently the Mountaineers are in the midst of a two-week period that affords coaches and players to work out and hold meetings for eight hours per week. That will increase to 20-hours per week, and introduce walkthroughs with a football July 24 until the start of fall camp which is scheduled Aug. 7.

The current workouts practice social distancing and require players to wear a facemask. The NCAA also just released its new guidelines to the resocialization of college athletics which will require:

—Daily self-health checks.

—The appropriate use of face coverings and social distancing during training, competition and outside of athletics.

—Testing strategies for all athletics activities, including pre-season, regular season and post-season.

—Testing and results within 72 hours of competition in high contact risk sports.

—Member schools must adhere to public health standards set by their local communities.

Still after so much positive news locally, the fact that cases were on the rise is at least a tough-pill to swallow with a cloud of uncertainty already surrounding college athletics this fall as a whole.

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