Hamilton Accies boss Stuart Taylor has revealed he had just eight players available for tonight's postponed Championship clash with Arbroath - and warned there are fears more Covid cases will scupper Sunday's trip to Queen of the South.
The clash with the league leaders at Gayfield was called off on Tuesday afternoon after the SPFL granted Hamilton's request to postpone the fixture due to a list of injuries, two positive Covid cases and a delay to the PCR test results of many other players and staff, which are taking longer than usual in the current climate.
New Douglas Park was shut down yesterday and there are question marks over whether Sunday's game with Queen of the South - who have had their own Covid issues in recent weeks - will go ahead.
Taylor said: "There's a bundle of players affected and we need to be careful with what we say in terms of confidentiality.
"But we only had eight left over for the Arbroath game.
"It is what it is now and we just have to try and get everyone ready for Sunday's game to meet the requirements of 13 fit players.
"I have to see how the lads recover over the next couple of days.
"There's injuries, we need to see the results of PCR tests and we need to see if there are any more positive Covid cases that develop.
"We don't want to be missing games. We want to be sticking to the routine, training and playing games, so we just need to hope the lads are not out for too long and there isn't any more positive cases.
"We've had to shut down. We had to send them away on Tuesday, we are off today and it's a case of seeing where we go from there."
Taylor stressed Accies have been going above and beyond when it comes to their Covid measures, but the ease with which the new Omicron variant is spreading has meant the virus has broken through their defences.
He said: "We were testing every day before we were told to do daily testing as part of the latest Government requirements.
"We were already wearing masks about the club even though things had been relaxed. We've been doing that for the last few weeks so we've always been ahead of the game and over cautious, if you like.
"But the way society is now, it's not just what you are doing at the football club.
"People are picking it up outwith. You can go to ASDA, pick up a loaf of bread and put it back down. But somebody's maybe done the same thing already, but they've had Covid.
"That's how easy it can spread.
"It's not us in the club, we are doing everything right, but this is spreading very quickly now."
Injuries to Ronan Hughes, Miko Virtanen and Matthew Shiels during their 3-2 Boxing Day defeat to Kilmarnock have left an already depleted squad threadbare, with skipper Brian Easton and Reegan Mimnaugh already amongst those who missed Sunday's game.
Taylor added: "People will have noticed on Sunday we had Macca [Kieran MacDonald] playing right back, Jamie Hamilton was in to centre-back, we were without Reegan and a few other lads.
"We had other injuries on top of that and we had two Covid cases. Then, on top of that, there were close contacts, so it's been difficult."
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