Netball: Covid blow on eve of England's netball series against Silver Ferns

Jess Thirlby coach of England. Photo / Getty

Netball New Zealand are confident the upcoming Taini Jamison series between the Silver Ferns and England will go ahead as planned, despite a Covid-19 scare.

England Roses head coach Jess Thirlby has tested positive for Covid-19 and hasn't joined the team in departing for New Zealand today.

Thirlby has no symptoms of the virus, but is self-isolating as a precaution.

Netball NZ head of events and internationals Kate Agnew confirmed all England players and management had undergone tests before departing – all of which came back negative.

Agnew said it meant they were relatively unconcerned over the possibility of players having to quarantine for longer than expected.

"We were able to be very assured that Jess herself had been very removed from the athletes and the management team. They followed some very strict protocols," Agnew said.

"They also worked quite a lot of self-isolation at home between camps so they've been very stringent in how they've approached their preparation.

"We're as confident as we can be that as many precautions and mitigations have been put into place as we possibly can to try and avoid any of those situations."

England are set to finish their 14-day quarantine less than five days prior to the first test on October 28. A positive test within the team would cause major disruptions.

Although confident that scenario was very unlikely, Agnew said they do have some plans in place.

"We're planning to move forward and deliver this series as we've got planned, [but] we are always thinking about the 'what if's' and we're prepared for things that might occur," she said.

"We have got quite a few 'what if' scenarios, we are comfortable that we could address most of those things very well including things like potentially, if we needed to, make some adjustment to the lead-up times before games, make some adjustments possibly to even a matchday."

England are expected to arrive in New Zealand on Saturday.

They've been granted a similar training exemption to that of the Wallabies, where they'll spend the first three days in self-isolation before being allowed to train together at a court, provided the team all test negative.

They'll also have space at their quarantine facility allocated for training purposes.