Wisconsin athletics: two athletes have tested positive for COVID-19

As campuses around the country slowly begin reopening in preparation for fall classes and sports there has been a spate of schools announcing that some of their athletes have tested positive for COVID-19. The Wisconsin Badgers were not one of them until a press release was sent out Monday afternoon detailing that two out of the 117 athletes tested returned positive results.

Here is the press release in full:

During our phased approach to bringing student-athletes back to campus, Wisconsin Athletics will conduct COVID-19 testing of our student-athletes. We expect there will be some positive results from these tests. Local public health guidelines will be adhered to for reporting and contact tracing to identify individuals who would have been in contact with the COVID-19 positive individual.

During our initial on campus screening of 117 student-athletes, two student-athletes tested positive for COVID-19. Per Wisconsin Athletics’ management plan outlined in our initial return to campus release, those student-athletes are now self-isolating and UW Athletics’ Infection Response Team is monitoring their recovery.

Moving forward during this initial phase of our return to campus, in order to protect the identity of those student-athletes who may test positive, Wisconsin Athletics will publicly release the aggregate number of positive tests at regular intervals.

We are unsure of what this means for the football or volleyball teams (the two teams that were first back on campus) in regards to future weightlifting or practice sessions, but it is good to hear that the two athletes are currently self-isolating and under the care of the UW Athletics Infection Response Team. We wish them a speedy and safe recovery.

We will update this story if we learn more from the UW Athletic Department.