Michigan Football: Two Wolverines test positive for COVID-19

Two Michigan football players have tested positive for COVID-19 as players returned to Ann Arbor for voluntary workouts.

The Michigan football program has been among the athletic programs returning to Ann Arbor to take part in offseason workouts recently.

The football, Men’s basketball and Women’s basketball teams were all invited back to campus to take part in voluntary workouts for the offseason. For Michigan that meant testing athletes and coaches and having strict health guidelines which it outlined here.

And as part of that testing, the University of Michigan announced Thursday that two Michigan football players had tested positive for COVID-19. There names were not revealed.

Here’s a statement from Michigan AD Warde Manuel who addressed the local media in a teleconference call:

"“To date, we have performed 221 tests, and have had two positive results on student-athletes. Both of those individuals were completely asymptomatic at the time of testing. None of our staff have tested positive.”"

While the statement doesn’t necessarily indicate a football player, a spokesperson for Michigan confirmed both were and gave the following statement via 247 sports:

"“The numbers we’ve released, the testing that has happened, the figures that we’ve given is really for the football program and staff who are close to them.”"

Dr. Sami Rifat, the head team physician of Michigan Athletics, who performed the testing joined said  the results were to be expected with the number of individuals being tested.

"“The essence of the testing is there’s really two parts to it,” Rifat said. “One is sort of a random sampling of the student athlete populations and see what the prevalence of the COVID is in our asymptomatic individuals within our community, and the other is more of a targeted approach where we would identify sports that operate in closer proximity to one another, as a higher risk sport, and target those those individuals throughout the throughout the year and monitor to see if there is any spikes in the occurrence of cases.”"

Obviously, as sports come back and athletes are tested, some will test positive, it’s a fact of life that Michigan football and others around the country will have to deal with. The NFL is trying to look at some of those same questions this week after players for the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans tested positive.

Through it all, we will do our best to keep you informed of all that’s happening, with the athletes and the schedule and everything else. For now, let’s hope these athletes get better and that everyone stays as healthy as possible.