It has been confirmed that seven members of staff at St Mirren have tested positive for COVID-19. As a result, their planned friendly against St Johnstone has been cancelled.
This is certainly the news that Scottish football fans were dreading. The Scottish Premiership set to get underway on August 1st.
As a result, it has been announced that clubs will have to go back to testing twice a week.
St Mirren Confirm Seven Positive COVID-19 Tests
Statement From the Scottish Authorities
A statement read: “The Joint Response Group has been notified that St Mirren Football Club has today returned seven positive tests for Covid-19.
“We immediately contacted the Scottish government and the office of the clinical director for Scotland to relay this information.
“As a consequence, St Mirren’s planned friendly match at home to St Johnstone, scheduled to take place on Saturday 25 July, has been cancelled.
“In light of this and other recent events, the JRG hereby notifies Scottish Premiership clubs that with immediate effect they must revert to twice-weekly testing protocols until further notice.”
Testing Process
As announced, testing will now go back to being done twice a week. This is after testing was relaxed to once a week earlier in July.
Since contact training resumed, there has only been one confirmed case out of 2,780 total tests. It was confirmed that this positive case was for an unnamed Aberdeen player.
The cases at St Mirren comes after worries about delays of test results in Scotland.
The delays caused Hibernian to cancel their friendly against Ross County at short notice. Meanwhile, a friendly between Rangers and Motherwell was delayed by two hours as they waited to hear on test results.
Response From Hamilton
On Saturday, Hamilton played St Mirren in a pre-season friendly. As a result, players and staff members from Hamilton may have been in contact with the St Mirren staff who have tested positive.
However, the club have since released a statement saying that all staff have tested negative for the virus.
The statement read: “We believe St Mirren have returned seven Covid-19 tests.
“Following the departure of the St Mirren squad on Saturday the area used was cleaned and disinfected. The location occupied by St Mirren was a segregated area at the far end of our stadium and is separate from the areas used by Hamilton Accies’ players and staff on a matchday.
“Subsequently on Monday, all players and backroom staff were tested with all results returned negative.”
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