Norvell confident Seminoles can reach vaccination threshold before season
Florida State coach Mike Norvell said the Seminoles are getting close to reaching a preferred 85% vaccination rate, but he’s confident the team will reach the mark before the start of the season.
“I do know where we are with the vaccination rate,” Norvell said following practice Friday. “We’re getting closer to that point. We are. We’ve had a lot of guys that have made decisions to put themselves in the best opportunity when it comes to that, so I feel good about where we are and where we’ll be
especially heading into the first game.”
The ACC announced Thursday that teams who are unable to play this upcoming season because they don’t have enough players available due to COVID will have to forfeit the game and the loss will count against their overall record. It’s a policy consistent with the other Power Five conferences.
The league also updated its testing policy, stating vaccinated players will no longer be required to be tested, but those players or staff members who are unvaccinated will be tested a minimum of three times per week with a molecular (PCR) test.
Teams with a vaccination rate of 85% or higher and with no active cases can relax their mitigations strategies around team activities, including eliminating the need for masks at meals or during travel but the choice is up to the individual schools.
At last month’s conference football kickoff, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said more than half of the 14 member schools had reached the preferred 85% threshold for vaccinations, with many more schools close to the mark.
“If you look across the country, it’s a volatile time in dealing with COVID and with the variants and all those things and so we want to just make sure our guys are as safe as possible and we put them in the best position to be able to go out there and play this game that they love,” Norvell said on the importance of reaching the threshold mark. Whether it’s a positive test or whether it’s contact tracing or any of those things, guys are going to miss an opportunity or miss time and opportunities, which is a challenge. So, we’re definitely looking forward to hitting that mark and I feel very confident that as we progress, we’re gonna be able to do so.”
FSU hosts Notre Dame in the season opener on Sept. 5.