The University of Michigan’s athletic department will shut down for the next two weeks as a response to a recent COVID-19 outbreak, a department spokesman told MLive on Saturday night.
The order will begin Friday and affect all sports, including football and teams currently in season like basketball and men’s ice hockey.
All in-person training sessions, practices and games are postponed and student-athletes, coaches and staff members “must immediately isolate/quarantine until further notice,” a period that could last until Feb. 7, according to a late-night release from the school.
The school newspaper, The Michigan Daily, said the shutdown was ordered by the state health department following confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, a more contagious strain of the deadly virus.
“Canceling competitions is never something we want to do, but with so many unknowns about this variant of COVID-19, we must do everything we can to minimize the spread among student-athletes, coaches, staff, and to the student-athletes at other schools,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in the release.
On Friday, Michigan’s athletic department reported 22 positive tests for COVID-19 last week, a significant jump from the week prior. The positive tests all came from student-athletes.
The Michigan’s men’s basketball team, which played a game against Purdue on Friday, was scheduled to play four games over the next two weeks. Among them was the first of two meetings with in-state rival Michigan State, set for Feb. 6 in Ann Arbor.