Players testing positive for coronavirus next week will miss Premier League restart
Any player who tests positive for coronavirus later this week faces missing the Premier League’s big restart. Telegraph Sport can reveal there is a ‘return to play’ protocol as part of the medical guidance for dealing with all footballers who have contracted Covid-19 and, even for those who were asymptomatic, the minimum period before returning to group training is two weeks.
This includes the seven-day self-isolation period, with players then only able to return to graded activity on day eight - subject to a negative test - before group training after 14 days. For symptomatic cases, players must be symptom free for at least 14 days before they can return to team training.
Premier League players are currently tested twice a week, usually on a Monday or Tuesday and then a Thursday or Friday. The Premier League is due to resume on June 17, meaning that any positive tests from later this week would almost certainly also mean that player missing at least one match.
Players and staff recorded no positive coronavirus tests in the latest round, conducted last Thursday and Friday, but there had previously been 12 people found to have Covid-19 in the three previous rounds. This included Watford’s Adrian Mariappe and Bournemouth’s Aaron Ramsdale, who were both asymptomatic.
The extra time to monitor an elite athlete's recovery and return to activity following Covid-19 has followed evidence of a significantly increased risk of heart injury among those people hospitalised with the virus. In the United States, even stricter rules are being proposed that would only allow asymptomatic athletes to return to gradual activity after two weeks.
The football ‘return to play’ protocol will apply across elite sport in the United Kingdom, which has been cleared by Government to resume from Monday.
The Government has also made it clear that the same expectations will apply to Premier League footballers as the rest of the population for its test and trace system.
Under the newly launched system, all ‘contacts’ of a positive Covid-19 case will be told to self-isolate for 14 days.
According to government guidelines, close contact is considered to people who have spent 15 minutes or more with someone at a distance of less than two metres or, more significantly in the case of footballers, face-to-face conservations less than one metre apart.
They will also ask the person who has tested positive whether they have shared a car journey with anyone outside their household or been in a work-setting with others. How the footballers ‘work-setting’ will be interpreted, whether in matches or training, is currently unclear.
The first Premier League matches back are scheduled to take place on Wednesday June 17, as a means of ensuring all the teams have played 29 matches, and then the next full round of games will follow that weekend.
