“After each battery of PCR in determined and controlled groups [the bubbles, which work on the Tour and in many other areas, such as schools or companies], the markers return to zero.
The results of a second battery of tests will not take into account the first when determining if there is an outbreak and the bubble should remain in quarantine, "a French ministerial source told France Presse, and the members of four immediately sighed in relief. Tour teams (Ineos, Cofidis, Mitchelton and Ag2r) that had a positive for covid-19 in the tests last Monday.
According to previous health forecasts, a second positive in seven days in a closed group would mean their immediate isolation, which in France is one week, which in the Tour means exclusion and goodbye.
A great Hirschi concert
Sagan neither commands nor wins anything on the Tour
This does not prevent, however, from maintaining that two positives in any of the members of one of the 22 competition bubbles of 300 people (the complete teams, runners and other personnel) in the new PCR tests that the mobile laboratory of the Tour will take place on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, rest day in Grenoble, next, they continue to involve direct exclusion.
Both the Tour organization, which suffered the loss of its director, Christian Prudhomme, positive last Monday, and the teams congratulate themselves for the low incidence of the pandemic in the race, which they attribute to the extreme and scrupulous care with which all Participants follow all the rules of mask, distancing and cleaning of hands.
The Tour also grew more chest announcing that the television audiences of the race in the 13 most important European countries, including Spain, had grown despite the fact that the pandemic forced the race to be delayed for two months.