It had been a mere three days since the Cardinals were finally without any players on the reserve/COVID-19 list after they had a league-high nine at one point.
However, the good fortune didn’t last as wide receiver Andy Isabella landed on the list for the second time this summer, this one because of a positive test.
Isabella was placed on reserve July 29 and because he was apparently unvaccinated and a high-risk contact (HRC), he remained on the list for five days. HRC players don’t have to miss time if they had been vaccinated.
Now, Isabella will be forced to quarantine for at least 10 days because he is unvaccinated. The only chance he has of coming back sooner is if he had the J&J vaccine after being considered a HRC. Vaccinated players not only are tested every 14 days instead of every day for unvaccinated players, but if they test positive, it’s possible they can return after two negative tests 24 hours apart.
People who had the J&J vaccine become fully vaccinated in two weeks, but it takes five weeks to be clear when taking the two-shot vaccines.
At one point, the Cardinals had six players, including starting offensive linemen Kelvin Beachum, Rodney Hudson and Justin Pugh along with wide receivers Isabella, KeeSean Johnson and Isaac Whitney (since released) on the COVID list as HRCs and all were out five days.
Upon those players returning, head coach Kliff Kingsbury was asked if it can be instructive to unvaccinated players to realize that if these issues occur during the season, it will be games missed, not just practices. If those three linemen were found to be HRCs on a game-week Thursday, they would all miss the upcoming game.
Kingsbury said, “No doubt. I think we were all hopeful that that maybe we wouldn't have to be dealing with this, but we're going to be dealing with it. And last year there were a lot of restrictions on what players could do and couldn't do. And this year, it's a little bit more open. So we all have to be careful in what we're doing and really adhere to those protocols.”
What he didn’t say was to get vaccinated, which is the best way to be safe and avoid potentially negatively affecting games.
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