WEST Coast continues to be hit by the spread of COVID-19, with 12 players from its round one team now unavailable for Sunday's clash against North Melbourne due to health and safety protocols.  

The Eagles have been reduced to as few as 17 available players from their AFL list and are now certain to draw heavily on their contingency list of WAFL players for the trip to Marvel Stadium.  

Coach Adam Simpson said the club was working with the AFL on the rapidly changing situation, which escalated on Thursday when key players including Tom Barrass, Josh Kennedy and Jack Redden were forced into isolation.  

Simpson chose not to name the latest players impacted under the health and safety protocols, but the Eagles will need to name an updated squad on Friday afternoon that could include at least five top-up players.

 "I think we've got 12 from last week's game that will be unavailable this week, so there's a little bit of work to do with our side," the coach said.   

"We'll have to confirm all that this afternoon, but we'll be leaning on the top-up players who have become available to us in the last few weeks.

"We're working with the AFL on the contingencies we use and [what we do] if we wake up tomorrow and we have another four or five."

Simpson said he was expecting the match to go ahead, but the Eagles have delayed their flight to Melbourne until Saturday as they work through player availability.

The club was aware of the prospect of more positive cases before the match, complicating its build-up.

"If you unfortunately get another couple of cases in Melbourne you're stuck in Melbourne, so we're working through a situation that we all thought might happen and we're the ones going through it," Simpson said.

"It's gone from two [cases] to five to 12 in a week. We all PCR tested yesterday, so today we're OK. But tomorrow morning we'll see what happens."

The Eagles' coaching group has not been impacted by health and safety protocols, with the group facing a challenge this week as it leads multiple players who have not yet trained with the team.

Simpson said he would seek to get the best team possible assembled, using those top-up players in positions they were familiar with and putting a focus on effort and workrate.  

"It's an opportunity to perform and win in adversity. We want to be resilient, and these are opportunities to display that," he said.

"Having the right attitude is the number one priority and we can control that. We can control effort, and the rest of it we'll do our best.

"I'm still in a positive state. There's no point crying about it, you've just got to get on with it."

Premiership forward Jack Darling is not among those players impacted and is on track to make his anticipated return to the team.

The Eagles will have a light training run after they land in Melbourne tomorrow and a team meeting, while going "above and beyond" with all protocols where practical.

"Yesterday we held off all the meetings and had a lot of isolation and then went out and tackled for 10 minutes," Simpson said.

"I suppose you can avoid that as much as you can, but we want to prepare to play.

"That's the challenge we’ve got. We're here to play footy, so we've got to prepare and train the players as best we can."