×

Nailers postpone two games due to COVID-19

WHEELING — The ECHL announced on Thursday that the games between the Wheeling Nailers and Indy Fuel scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Indy have been postponed after multiple cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on the Nailers’ active roster.

The ECHL is working with the Nailers and Fuel to reschedule those games for a later date.

“I can’t tell you names or anything like that but we did have a few positive cases in the organization and after working with Indy, we thought it was best for the safety of everybody to postpone the games,” Nailers Alternate Governor Brian Komorowski said.

“When we set this all up with the league at the beginning of the year, we put protocols in place. We have time so we can get these games in without jeopardizing the health of anybody.”

The positive cases were found after the routine tests the Nailers had to keep players, coaches and fans safe.

“We test two-to-three times a week internally and we caught it that way,” Komorowski said.

“Most of these were asymptomatic with no symptoms but we have a couple that do have mild symptoms. Everybody is isolated and we’ve been talking to the health department.

“We’ll get a PCR Test (Polymerase Chain Reaction) to confirm what we caught but we just want to isolate this and make sure it doesn’t get out of control.”

Komorowski is optimistic that with the quick actions taken by the league and the team, that this weekend’s games will hopefully be the only games affected by COVID.

“As of right now (these two games) will be it,” Komorowski said of the postponed games.

“We’ll let the guys get healthy and quarantine everybody who is either exposed or has it and then go from there. The last thing you want to do is put anybody who might be sick on a bus and then we would have a huge problem.

“We’ll follow the CDC guidelines. Everybody has to by symptom-free and we’ll keep everybody in isolation for as long as they need to be — 7-10 days — and we have a medical team that is on top of it.”

Wheeling went 1-2-1 on its last road trip and plans to return home to WesBanco Arena on Jan. 22 when South Carolina comes to town for a weekend stint, as long as there are no more setbacks due to COVID-19.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

COMMENTS

[vivafbcomment]

Starting at $4.73/week.

Subscribe Today