Number of Edmonton Elks’ positive cases grows
EDMONTON — One more Edmonton Elks player has been added to the list of the team’s positive COVID-19 tests, the club announced Wednesday, bringing the current number to 12 since the initial outbreak was discovered Sunday.
An initial group of five positive tests promptly led the Canadian Football League to postpone Edmonton’s game in Toronto, which was scheduled to kick off the Week 4 slate on Thursday.
Four more positive tests followed on Monday, when Elks president and CEO Chris Presson addressed the media, who were left with more questions than answers as the club continues advanced testing while also trying to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak. And figure out why they are the only team in the league with positive COVID tests since the start of the regular season, considering they had three previous cases for a total of 15 on the year.
“I wish I had the answer to that,” Presson said. “If I did, I’d be paid a million dollars a minute. Right now, I don’t have that answer. It’s invisible, so where you get it, how you get it, where our players got it, I unfortunately couldn’t tell you that.
On Tuesday, CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie stated the team had two more positive tests, before Wednesday’s update by the Elks brought the current number to 12.
Another update will be forthcoming no later than today, as all Elks players, coaches and staff working closely with them continue to quarantine while the team’s facilities have remained closed since Sunday.
No players have been identified, though the Elks say the list of positive tests includes both vaccinated and unvaccinated players from both the active roster as well as those who don’t travel with the team, be they on the practice roster or injured list.
While he didn’t provide the percentage of players under contract with the Elks who are vaccinated, Presson described it as “a large portion of our players and coaches and front-office staff.”
He also said the Elks are sixth out of nine teams when it comes to having the most players vaccinated.
“That’s what makes it so dangerous. Even when you do everything right, things can go wrong,” Presson said. “And I believe we’ve done everything right.
“If not, that will certainly come to the forefront, but I have not heard that today and I don’t plan on hearing it. Our players are very well informed, they understand the protocols quite well and, certainly, it’s a challenge when you’re in a bubble for a lengthy period of time and you’re limited as to where you can go and what you can do.
“Certainly, that could create some challenges, I just don’t think we’re there.”
But the question remains, if players, coaches and top-tier staff were all following protocols laid out by the league, then how does a team find itself in this current crisis?
“I wish I could give you that answer. I think in this environment and reading all we can and looking at what’s happened in other leagues around the world, it’s an anomaly,” Presson said. “I could be getting it sitting here right now because I’m touching a surface that I don’t know has it on it. There’s just so many ways, as I understand, that you can contract it and you can pass it from person to person.
“So, that’s the challenge, is the invisibility of it and I’m confident our players are following the protocols, both on premise and off premise. We can only control what we can control and this has shown us that there is a great variability of uncontrollability.”