Following Germany's initial COVID-19 outbreak among several of its players, the IIHF has announced on Tuesday that no further tests from the 2021 World Junior Championship tournament have come back positive.
In addition, the federation also announced that five of the eight German players who had been in quarantine have since been released and are now permitted to rejoin the team for tournament play, with the remaining three becoming eligible to return in the coming days. Until today, Germany had been playing with a heavily reduced roster as a result of the outbreak.
Given the virus' ability to spread so quickly, this is very positive news for the IIHF, who have shown that their enhanced safety measures are effective in not only containing an outbreak, but also preventing further transmission inside the bubble.
The total number of COVID-19 tests has now reached almost 8,200 since teams entered the Edmonton bubble. 2,590 of those tests were completed between the preliminary round and now, almost midway through the tournament.
Great news for both the IIHF and the teams competing in the tournament. The bubble format has been an extremely important experiment that has allowed professional sports to continue throughout the pandemic, providing fans with at least some reprieve through the entertainment value that these sporting events have been able to provide. At the very least, it's been a great distraction from the sheer boredom and misery that comes with a pandemic.
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