Tour de France rest day Covid testing: Two riders positive
Tour de France rest day Covid testing: Two riders positive
The UCI has released the results of the Tour de France‘s rest day COVID testing and it’s mostly good news for the Tour peloton.
Two riders returned positive rapid tests and require further PRC testing, to be completed Tuesday morning prior to the start of stage 16, but the rest of the peloton was negative for COVID. Those two riders are asymptomatic but have been put in isolation until they are tested again. Neither rider is inside the top 20 on GC, according to the UCI.
As on the first Tour rest day, the initial tests performed just after the stage on Sunday were antigen/rapid tests. If those come back positive, the riders or staff then take a PCR test, which provides a more accurate picture of viral load and transmissibility. Three doctors – one from the UCI, one from the Tour organizer, and one from the team in question – then analyze the PCR results and decide whether a rider can continue in the race.
Already this Tour, two riders tested positive initially before being cleared to race before the next start. The first was Bob Jungels, who tested positive in the days leading up to the Tour, and the second was Rafał Majka, who tested positive last Tuesday but was cleared by a PCR test and is still in the race.
Nine riders – including stage winners Magnus Cort and Simon Clarke, and two UAE Team Emirates domestiques – have already left the race due to positive COVID tests.
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