Rigsby’s professional partner Cheryl Burke tested positive just ahead of this past Monday’s live show, forcing the couple to compete using rehearsal footage as neither was allowed in studio.
“Dancing with the Stars” is heading into uncharted territory and decisions will have to be made now that both halves of one of its competing couples have tested positive for COVID-19.
Cheryl Burke revealed her positive test over this past weekend, necessitating the couple pulling out of any live in-studio appearances during Monday night’s live broadcast. Instead, they were allowed to compete using rehearsal footage. They were not eliminated.
On Thursday, her partner Cody Rigsby shared a video to his Instagram page where the star Peloton instructor revealed that he, too, has now tested positive for Covid. On top of that, he’s also suffering some mild symptoms, “congestion, cough, a little bit of a headache.”
Rigsby said it is his second time this year getting Covid, but his symptoms are much milder this time, which he credits to antibodies and the vaccine.
Of course, this raises a huge question mark over both Rigsby and Burke as the show continues. They don’t have the highest marks of the season after two weeks, but neither are they at the very bottom, per judges scores.
But if both have Covid and there are symptoms as well in play, are they in any condition to continue? Should accommodations be made for them to compete off-site? Will they even be allowed to be around one another? More than likely, they’re both positive because of their close proximity, but what now?
Also, we can assume that they’ve either not been rehearsing at all for this upcoming week, or certainly not as much as many of their competitors. In his caption to the video, Rigsby wrote, “To properly rest and recover as well as avoid exposing others, I will be taking a break in the coming days.”
“As far as my fate on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ we are still trying to figure that out right now,” Rigsby explained in the video. “So please be patient with that answer.” Well, we can only be patient about four more days, because there’s another live show coming up.
Would they even want to continue at this point? And if they go, would that become this week’s elimination — or would the show bank a non-elimination week to dramatically reveal later in the season?
Burke offered her own update on Wednesday, sharing to her YouTube channel that she’s also starting to deal with Covid symptoms, having lost her taste and smell now, as well as some congestion, etc. She, too, credits being vaccinated for keeping all of her symptoms mild.
As she talked about how much she’s missing being away from “Dancing with the Stars,” she appeared to be speculating that there was talk of Rigsby dancing with another professional partner in the short term — there is precedent for that as a temporary solution. But that was before his own positive diagnosis today.
As for concerns about a “DWTS” Covid outbreak, Burke says that her positive status was discovered before she and Rigsby went in for camera blocking last week and before they were around anyone on the crew, so she’s confident that won’t happen.
You can check out her entire update video below:
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