Memo details COVID concern before bowl game
A San Jose State University campus memo obtained by the Bay Area News Group states that more than one person who tested positive for COVID-19 visited the school’s athletic facilities the day the football team flew to Arizona for its bowl game.
The memo that was sent to the San Jose State campus community on Dec. 28 by Matt Nymeyer, the school’s director of environmental health and safety and does not identify any individuals by name.
It states, “On Sunday, December 27, more than one individual who tested positive were reported to have visited the Simpkins Stadium Center and Campus Village C on December 25, 26 and 27.”
Campus Village C, known as “the Suites,” are student dormitories next to the main campus and about 1.5 miles from the football stadium.
The football team congregated at the stadium center on Dec. 27 before boarding six buses to Mineta San Jose International Airport to take two charter flights to Tucson, Ariz., that night.
School spokesman Kenneth Mashinchi declined Tuesday to say if anyone at the Simpkins Athletic Center or the dormitories from Dec. 25-27 was not part of the football program.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, in compliance with HIPAA law, SJSU has not disclosed specifics regarding individuals in the campus community — students, faculty or staff — who have tested positive for COVID-19 or have been deemed close contacts,” he said in an email.
Federal guidelines under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA) do not in general apply to aggregate data such as overall numbers of COVID-19 cases, legal experts said Tuesday.
At least six football players and the team’s offensive and defensive coordinators were absent from the Arizona Bowl game on Dec. 31. Ball State defeated San Jose State 34-13 to hand the
Spartans their only loss of the season.
The school did not announce the missing personnel that included Mountain West defensive player of the year Cade Hall of Morgan Hill and star receiver Bailey Gaither of Paso Robles.
The missing players and coaches were announced by the Spartans radio broadcast. A school athletic department spokesman told this news organization before kickoff that he could acknowledge who was “not available” once the game began and that it “would be inappropriate to attribute ‘not available’ strictly to COVID-19 issues or protocols.”
The spokesman did not respond to a follow-up question once the game started.
After the game, coach Brent Brennan said he learned about the players’ and coordinators’ absences at “game time.”
On Dec. 27, the athletic department spokesman declined to say if any members of the football program had tested positive from a nasal swab test taken the previous day. He also would not say if any members of the program would miss the trip to
Arizona because of coronavirus-related issues.
Mashinchi said Tuesday that an Arizona health officer approved the team’s participation in the bowl game. He added that Ball State officials were notified about SJSU’s COVID-19 issues.
“Individuals who tested positive or are deemed close contacts did not travel back to San Jose on December 31 and are isolating or quarantining,” Mashinchi said. “Some athletics staff remain in Arizona to provide support.”
The campus memo said it was informing the university community in compliance with CalOSHA guidelines. The memo added that the school’s COVID-19 case management team was conducting contact tracing for the cases.
“Any person who may have come into contact with the positive individual will be privately notified by a member of the case management team,” the document read. “After learning of each report, the affected area(s) was cleaned and sanitized with a deeper level of sanitation performed for affected spaces, including high touch point areas like door handles, stairway railings, elevator buttons and bathrooms.”
It is unlikely people other
than those with the departing football team would have been at the off-campus stadium facilities on Dec. 27. Santa Clara County public health officials have prohibited competitive sports since Nov. 28 to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The San Jose State men’s and women’s basketball teams — the other active school sports programs during the health crisis — relocated to Phoenix in mid-December.
WALKER, ASSISTANT LEAVE PROGRAM >> San Jose State’s rough week got even rougher with the news star wide receiver Tre Walker is transferring and wide receivers coach Kevin Cummings has been hired at Arizona.
Walker, a two-time AllMountain West Conference receiver who had nearly 200 catches and 3,000 yards in his four years at San Jose State, announced he’ll play his fifth and final collegiate season elsewhere.
Walker officially entered transfer over the weekend and it’s not a stretch to believe he could be following his position coach, Cummings, to Arizona. New Arizona coach Jedd Fisch acknowledged the hiring of the 30-year-old Cummings as the Wildcats’ new receivers coach Monday.