St. Mirren’s positive test for coronavirus is “not a big setback” before the Scottish Premiership’s scheduled launch on August 1, says Scotland’s national clinical director.
The first seven cases of the Paisley Club were reduced to one after another test.
“A couple of friendly matches had to be canceled, but hopefully the league can start on August 1st if all is well,” said Professor Jason Leitch.
He added that he rated the club test system as eight out of ten.
However, on BBC Scotland’s Off The Ball, he revealed that a working group is exploring a way to more closely integrate the private tests that generated the six false alarms in St. Mirren into the NHS ‘Test and Protect system.
“Right now, these tests are not as reliable as our NHS tests, so we’re testing them again and adding them to the ‘Test and Protect’ system,” said Leitch.
“If we can investigate and accredit these laboratories, we may be able to put all of this together in a large bundle, but it will take a while because there are quite a few private laboratories that offer Covid tests.”
On Friday, the Scottish Professional Football League announced in response to an employee’s positive tests in the back room of St. Mirren that all 12 top clubs would return to the tests twice a week and not once.
Previously, Hibernian’s friendly match with Ross County was canceled due to a delay in test results, and the Rangers’ match with Motherwell was postponed for two hours for the same reason.
However, managing director Neil Doncaster said he is still looking forward to “confidently that the games will resume this weekend.”
When asked if he thought the Scottish Premier League would start as planned, Leitch replied, “Yes. They are fine. There was a bit of hiccups, but they pick up on the positive aspects and they acted very quickly.
“There is clearly some work to be done behind the scenes, but essentially the system worked pretty well, and they ran tests twice a week to try to keep those bubbles safe.”
Leitch emphasized that “footballers and football clubs are not exempt from” Test and Protect “”.
“If a random player gets a positive case next week, he’ll fit in ‘Test and Protect’, be interviewed, and anyone he comes in close contact with, including other players, will be isolated,” he said.
However, he pointed out that the clubs should have a “very strict separation” between employees in the back room and players. “So I would be very surprised if one of the players is within two meters of this person,” added Prof. Leitch.
