Mostly on the mend

Canucks GM says players largely ‘on the other side’ of COVID outbreak

VANCOUVER

The Vancouver Canucks are recovering from the NHL’s worst COVID-19 outbreak and believe they can complete the pandemic-condensed season.

An outbreak has ripped through the team over the past week and a half with 25 people — 21 players and four members of the coaching staff — testing positive, and one additional player being deemed a close contact.

General manager Jim Benning told reporters Friday that many of the players are feeling better.

“I think our players, for the most part, our players are on the other side of it,” he said. “We still have family members that are getting sick and I think the players worry about that.”

The athletes have had a “whole range” of COVID-19 symptoms, said team physician Dr. Jim Bovard, but no one has needed to be hospitalized.

The Canucks confirmed on Wednesday that a variant is involved in the outbreak. Full genome sequencing is being conducted by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control to determine which specific variant.

The team previously said an ongoing investigation by Vancouver Coastal Health and contract tracing have found that the outbreak was sparked by a single unnamed individual picking up the infection in a “community setting, which has since been identified by public health as a public exposure location.

“Rapid spread of infection throughout the team indicates a link between contacts and the primary case,” the Canucks said in a statement.

Bovard said the individual picked up the virus somewhere that was within the NHL and provincial protocols.

“There’s no culprit here other than the COVID virus itself. Everybody’s been working incredibly hard in the last year to avoid getting it and in spite of their best efforts, this can happen,” he said.

“It’s not an accident that it happened when it did given what’s going on in the broader community.”

B.C. announced a record 1,293 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday.

“What’s happening with us is really just a microcosm of what’s going on in the broader community,” Bovard said.

The team’s doctors and staff are set to meet with health officials Friday to discuss when the Canucks can reopen their facilities and get players back on the ice. Bovard noted that the final decision will be up to health officials.

The Canucks (16-18-3) have not played since March 24 when they dropped a 5-1 decision to the Winnipeg Jets in Vancouver.

The team then had a six-day break and was set to take on the Calgary Flames on March 31. The game was postponed shortly before puck drop when a player and a coach tested positive for COVID-19. Another player had tested positive the day before.

Nineteen Canucks players were listed on the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list Thursday.