The University of Michigan has announced that it will be suspending voluntary workouts for four sports, including field hockey, volleyball, swimming and diving, and ice hockey.
The move to suspend the sports was due to positive COVID-19 test results and contact tracing, according to The Blade.
“Our medical experts are providing the necessary care and communication to individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and those who have come into close contact with someone who has tested positive,” stated a release from the school.
Michigan is currently holding voluntary practices for 18 sports that have returned to campus.
The most recent test results came back last Friday. There were five positive tests in that batch.
According to The Blade, Michigan has conducted 729 coronavirus tests performed on individuals in the athletic department, with 13 positive results — a positivity rate of 1.8 percent.
Darryl Conway, the senior associate athletic director and chief health and welfare officer, who oversees all student health and welfare explained the intricacies of contact tracing on a Zoom call with press.
“We'll collaborate with Student Life for isolation housing on campus for the person who's infected,” Conway said. “We'll work with those students, the infected person, and the quarantined person or persons with regards to the parameters around their isolation or quarantine and helping them out with making sure they have the necessary things that they need to go through that quarantine. We will monitor their symptoms twice a day.
“They will be contacted by slew of people on a daily basis. Their athletic trainer will check in with them every single day. The team dietitian will check in with them. Their academic counselor will check in with them to make sure they're staying up from an academic standpoint, and then we'll do everything we can to address their mental health. So our athletic counselors will also check in with them, just to make sure their mental health is being addressed, along with their coaches, along with the strength coaches, and everybody else that's within that interdisciplinary health care team or interdisciplinary family that we have here in athletics to make sure that they're being taken care of.”
