LSU football coronavirus outbreak
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00:00 A return to on-campus workouts brought with it a spike in coronavirus.
00:04 Student-athletes are contracting the virus while attending social gatherings outside
00:08 of their school's sanitized facility.
00:11 And at least 30 of LSU's 115 football players have been isolated because they either tested
00:17 positive for COVID-19 or were found to have had contact with those who did test positive.
00:22 Joining me now is our LSU reporter Glenn West.
00:24 Glenn, at this point, fortunately no LSU athlete or staff member has required hospitalization.
00:30 And very few have experienced symptoms or effects beyond mild symptoms here.
00:34 But what has been the quarantine protocol?
00:37 Yeah, so this has been something that LSU has prepared the last three months for.
00:42 In fact, you know, when the SEC first started to allow players to return for voluntary workouts,
00:48 they used LSU's model as the protocol, essentially.
00:53 So what happens here is, you know, LSU obviously with the 30 kids that are quarantined, they'll
00:59 spend the next 10 days in quarantine.
01:02 And then three days after that, they will be, have to show symptom-free.
01:08 They'll have to be symptom-free for three days after that before they can start returning
01:11 to team activities.
01:12 And so that's kind of the protocol right now for those quarantined kids.
01:17 And again, it's something that LSU has prepared the last few months for as it pertains to
01:23 their athletes potentially contracting the virus.
01:27 Now as the school has kind of gone above and beyond to make sure that the facilities are
01:31 clean and the athletes practice social distancing while working out and training, obviously
01:36 college kids are college kids and they are going to socialize a bit.
01:39 I mean, how can you kind of rein that in?
01:43 And what does this say about the realistic possibility that we'll see a safe college
01:47 football season this year?
01:48 Yeah, so I mean, you'd hope that this would be a wake-up call for a lot of the players,
01:52 at least on LSU's team.
01:54 And obviously a couple of days ago with Clemson, they reported 20 cases of their athletes contracting
02:00 the virus.
02:01 So you would hope that this would be a wake-up call for some of these athletes at LSU in
02:07 particular and some of these other schools.
02:10 In LSU's case in particular, a handful of the athletes contracted the virus are self-isolating
02:17 right now because they were at local bars, Tigerland in particular, which is a popular
02:23 string of local bars here in Baton Rouge.
02:25 So I think as it pertains to the season, we still have to wait and see.
02:29 I think the fact that LSU has been on top of this and that they are really honing in
02:36 on keeping these athletes and their roommates away from the rest of the players and coaches
02:41 and everything like that, it shows that they're taking the right steps.
02:45 But as far as what it means for a season, I think we still have to wait until some of
02:50 these college kids start getting back to campus and are walking in class with a lot of these
02:57 other football players.
03:00 Sports Illustrated's LSU reporter Glenn West, thank you so much for the insight.
03:05 Thank you.
03:05 Thank you.
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