Kelly Stafford Blasts NFL for Turning Life into a ‘Nightmare’ After Publicizing False Positive Covid Test

Kelly Stafford, wife of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, blasted the NFL for making her family’s life a “nightmare” over the last few days after the league publicly placed her husband on the COVID-IR list after testing positive for the Chinese coronavirus — a result that later proved to be false.

“The past four days have been somewhat of a nightmare. For 24 hours, we believed my husbands [sic] positive for covid,” she said in an Instagram posted on Tuesday.

Kelly said she and her family, including the NFL star, were tested in the following days, all wielding negative results.

“After his second negative, we were made adware [sic] of the ‘false positives’ and how this was one of those cases,” Kelly, who had surgery to remove a brain tumor last year, continued.

Despite that, the league initially placed her husband on the COVID-IR list, and he was not removed from it until Tuesday. In the time that he has been on the list, the Stafford family, Kelly said, has faced scrutiny from the public.

“I have been losing my mind because of how my Family has been treated since my husband was put on the Covid-IR list,” she wrote.

“Even after we knew it was a false positive, I was approached in a grocery store 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… and that’s just to name a few things,” she continued, placing the blame squarely on the NFL.

“I blame the @NFL for not holding themselves accountable,” Kelly said. “These are people’s lives and livelihoods that are in those results in THEIR test sites. 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.”

She emphasized that her family is “absolutely fine and feeling great.”

View this post on Instagram

@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

The Lions released a statement on Tuesday affirming the quarterback’s removal from the COVID-IR list, placing him back on the active roster.

“As a result of a False-Positive test result, he was forced due to NFL/NFLPA protocols to sit out until he received two negative tests. His testing sequence for the Pre-Entry period was: negative, negative, False-Positive,” the team stated.

“The next three tests were all negative. 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 team emphasized. ” Also, all of Matthew’s family have been tested and everyone is negative.”