While Ohio State linebacker Justin Hilliard was sidelined by a false positive COVID-19 test last week, that situation shouldn't happen again.
Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said Thursday that the Big Ten had changed its policy this week to allow an athlete whose day-of-game antigen test for COVID-19 comes up positive to be cleared to play if they take a PCR test and test negative.
B1G testing change this week, Gary Barta: "If a student-athlete tests positive with the rapid antigen test, we will be able to test a student-athlete on either team with a PCR and get that result before the game. If they test negative on the PCR, they'll still be able to play."
— Scott Dochterman (@ScottDochterman) November 5, 2020
That policy change comes after Hilliard was unable to play in Ohio State's game at Penn State last Saturday after his rapid-response test that morning came back positive, even though he later took a PCR test that came back negative, which allowed him to be on the sidelines and travel back with the Buckeyes.
Ryan Day said Thursday that was because some schools in the Big Ten did not have the ability to get PCR test results before games, which could have potentially provided a competitive advantage for the schools that did.
“The way that it was explained to me was that not every school has the opportunity to get that PCR in that short of a time, and so they wanted to make sure it was equal across the board,” Day said. “That’s something that everybody had to agree upon in order to get the season started.”
Now, though, it appears the infrastructure is in place for all schools to be able to get PCR results on game days, which will keep players from being sidelined by false positives from the less accurate antigen tests.
Hilliard, who has yet to play this season after he was unavailable due to injury for the season opener against Nebraska but would have been able to play at Penn State, reacted to the news on Twitter:
— Justin Hilliard (@JHilliard47) November 6, 2020
The Big Ten was already using PCR tests to confirm or dispute any positive COVID-19 results from antigen tests, as PCR tests are considered to be more accurate. Players who recorded a positive PCR test result will still be sidelined for 21 days from the day of diagnosis.
