Liverpool Covid-19 outbreak down to 'a lot of false positives,' claims Jurgen Klopp
- Michael Graham
- 10 January 2022
Reds boss says Arsenal Carabao Cup game had to be called off despite only one new case of Covid-19 in his squad.
Jurgen Klopp says the Covid-19 outbreak that prompted Liverpool to postpose their Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal was due to 'a lot of false positives.'
Liverpool caused a stir when they requested the postponement of ther semi-final first-leg clash with the Gunners.
That was despite Klopp using 32 players in total this season and being happy to field teams made up entirely from their youth ranks in the competition in previous years.
Many fans and parts of the media also argued that the three Liverpool players away on Arfiican Cup of Nations duty - Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, and Naby Keita should not have counted among the number of absentees the Reds could cite in their application to call off the game.
Now, after beating Shrewsbury 4-1 in the FA Cup, Klopp has revealed there wasn't a fresh Covid-19 outbreak at all at the club.
"This was the team we could line up with today and the boys did really well," Klopp said.
"We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives, but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.
"The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives."
Lateral Flow Testing has proven to be incredibly accurate in the UK, with a study in March 2021 suggesting false negatives are a highly unusual occurence.
Dr Susan Hopkins, the Covid-19 Strategic Response Director to Public Health England and Chief Medical Adviser to NHS Test and Trace, said: "We've looked very carefully at the evidence that's emerging from LFD tests that have been delivered at home and in testing sites.
"Real-life scenarios suggests they are at least 99.9% specific which means that the risk of false positives is extremely low - less than one in a thousand - which is a very good test."
