Conor McKenna believes his COVID-19 test was a false positive
Essendon defender Conor McKenna has broken his silence about the positive COVID-19 test that rocked the AFL and saw his team’s game postponed. Plus, will he still be at the Bombers in 2021?
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Essendon star Conor McKenna believes his COVID-19 test that rocked the AFL season was a false positive.
McKenna made the stunning claim on an Irish Facebook page, confirming he never suffered symptoms and still doubted whether he ever had coronavirus.
The AFL has claimed that McKenna recorded two positive tests – on Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20.
McKenna was only retested on the Saturday because of Friday’s irregular result, which he said was a “false positive”.
The AFL postponed Essendon’s Round 3 game against Melbourne because of McKenna’s results and is yet to cram that game back into the fixture.
“On the Friday it’s called a false positive … so I had to get retested on the Saturday and that came up positive,” McKenna said.
“And then I got retested on the Tuesday and I got negative.
“So to be honest I still don’t really know what happened, and then I tested negative probably three times in a row in that week and got bloods done.
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“That showed that maybe I had it six weeks ago maybe when I was in Ireland after a flight, so there’s really still no clarity.
“They’re not sure if I had it 10 weeks ago after a flight or if I had it three weeks ago. I still really don’t know where it stands, to be honest.
“It was another 10 days stuck in a room by myself.”
Teammate James Stewart, who falls out of contract this year, was ordered to spend 14 days in isolation after health authorities identified him as one of McKenna’s seven “close contacts”.
Peter Jess, Stewart’s manager, said it was “medically and scientifically improbable” that McKenna had COVID-19 based on his pattern of tests.
“If that’s (false positive) been confirmed the situation needs to be addressed,” Jess said.
Melbourne doctor Peter Brukner told the Herald Sun that the accuracy of COVID-19 tests was “significantly” less than 99 per cent, and somewhere in the 90s.
The AFL said that the state government retested McKenna’s swab samples through Victoria’s Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory and confirmed both his Friday and Saturday tests were positive.
McKenna, 24, said he felt “100 per cent” both on the eve of what was supposed to be his comeback game against the Demons and in the weeks that followed.
McKenna said he would play out the season before deciding whether to turn his back on the last year of his AFL contract and return home to Ireland.
He had surgery to repair a broken finger on Tuesday and said he expected to miss Friday night’s game against Western Bulldogs, although the Bombers refused to officially rule him out.
The defender will have spent 52 days in quarantine once the Bombers have served their two weeks isolating at the Mantra Hotel in Southport.
McKenna has also undergone about 16 COVID-19 tests. McKenna said he played two games of Gaelic football during last year’s Christmas break in a decision that angered Bombers coach John Worsfold.
On McKenna’s homesickness battle, he said: “I talk to them (family) every year, it’s not really something I shy away from”.
“It’s something I always struggle with and at the end of the season I make the decision on whether to go back or not and if it’s worth my while (to play AFL).
“So I’ll do the same thing at the end of this season, October time, at the end of the season.
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Originally published as Conor McKenna believes his COVID-19 test was a false positive