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, at least on the COVID front.
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.
Despite returning to the team, Barkley has been ruled out for Sunday’s game against the Raiders, as the running back is still not ready to return to action due to an ankle injury.
Barkley hasn’t played the last three games due to the injury.
Due to the initial positive test, Barkley wasn’t able to work with trainers for much of this week, further hampering his ability to return.
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