False COVID-19 Test For Stafford Led To Family Harassment: Wife

DETROIT, MI — The wife of former University of Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford took to Instagram Tuesday to complain about how her family was harassed after Stafford received a false positive COVID-19 test.

“Even after we knew it was false positive, our school told us they were not allowed back, 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 need 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 … and that’s just to name a few things,” Kelly Stafford posted to her Instagram page.

Matthew Stafford, a number-one pick of the Detroit Lions in 2009, was removed Tuesday from the team’s COVID injured reserve list, The Detroit Free Press reported.

Stafford initially had been placed on the list on Friday after a positive test following two negative tests earlier in the week.

When the positive test was followed by three more negative tests over the weekend, Stafford was taken off the list.

“To be clear, Matthew does NOT have COVID-19 and never has had COVID-19 and the test in question was a False-Positive," the Detroit Lions said in a statement. "Also, all of Matthew’s family have been tested and everyone is negative."

Stafford’s wife Kelly blamed the NFL for releasing the information publicly before the diagnosis was certain.

“These are people's lives and livelihoods that are in those results in THEIR test sites,” she wrote on Instagram. “Maybe we should be absolutely positive a person has covid before releasing that info to the world.”

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@nfl @nfl @nfl 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. If we have learned anything in the past two years, it’s that we know the value of health and the health of others.
A post shared by Kelly Stafford (@kbstafford89) on Aug 4, 2020 at 1:52pm PDT

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A post shared by Detroit Lions (@detroitlionsnfl) on Aug 4, 2020 at 12:47pm PDT