It hasn't been an easy year for Saquon Barkley, and this week has been yet another challenge for the Giants' star running back. Fortunately, it looks like it's concluding with some good news.
According to Mike Garafolo of NFL Network, Barkley's COVID-19 test was revealed to be a false positive after further testing. It was a long and convoluted journey to this point, so let's recap.
The team's running backs coach, Burton Burns, tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week along with 12 other members of the team — including Barkley — on Tuesday. A retest following that initial set of results found that only Burns tested positive again. On Wednesday, Barkley tested negative, according to Adam Schefter, which obviously seemed like a promising development — until Ralph Vacchiano of SNY reported that Barkley's next test was a positive. He was then place on the Reserve/COVID-19 list.
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On Thursday, Barkley remained on the Reserve/COVID-19 list because his first two rapid tests were positive, but his PCR test came back negative.
Later that day, the team released a statement saying that the apparent COVID outbreak was due to a lab/testing issue. The team canceled in-facility meetings for players and conducted everything virtually as a precautionary measure, but acknowledged that Bio-Reference Laboratories was "experiencing an unusually high number of false positives."
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And that brings us to Friday, when the running back re-entered the facility, apparently a victim of the aforementioned run of false positives.
So it looks like all that's out of the way, thankfully. But for Giants fans and fantasy owners of Barkley, it's probably best not to get too excited. Missing so much practice while attempting to return from a weeks-long ankle injury is not an ideal situation, and we'll have to stay tuned as to whether or not the Giants will have their Pro Bowler back by Sunday. As of now, it doesn't seem all that likely.
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