Kelly Stafford, the wife of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, is lashing out at the NFL for the way the league handles its coronavirus testing after her husband got a false positive test result.
Stafford voiced her frustration Tuesday in a seething Instagram post after the Lions announced their quarterback did not have the coronavirus.
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“I would also like people to know.. if you saw me out and about after this, it was because we already knew it was a false positive. We would never chance endangering anyone with this virus,” she captioned her message.
“If we have learned anything in the past two years, it’s that we know the value of health and the health of others.”
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"The past four days have been somewhat of a nightmare,” she wrote in her message. "For 24 hours, we believed my husband was positive for covid.. We were all tested the day after and we were all negative including Matthew. Then he tested negative again, then again, again, and again.
“After his second negative, we were made aware of the ‘false positives’ and how this was one of those cases,” she wrote.
Stafford, who gave birth to the couple’s fourth child in June a little more than a year after she had surgery to remove a brain tumor, said her husband had been placed on the injured reserve because of the virus, which had a big effect on the way people treated her and her family.
"Even after we knew it was false positive, our school told us they were not allowed back," she wrote. "I was approached in a grocery store and told I was 'endangering others,' my kids were harassed and kicked off a playground, I was told I needed to wait in my car when trying to pick up food, and people closest to us had to get tested just so they could go back to work."
Stafford says the NFL should take responsibility for what happened.
"I blame the @NFL for not holding themselves accountable. These are people's lives and livelihoods that are in those results in THEIR test sites," she wrote.
"Maybe we should be absolutely positive a person has COVID before releasing that info to the world. I’m sharing our experience because I don’t want it happening to any other family that plays for this league."
The NFL is scheduled to kick off its season on Sept. 10, although many players, including Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (Chiefs), Damien Williams (Chiefs) Marquise Goodwin (Eagles) and Nate Solder (Giants), have already said they will opt out due to the coronavirus.