The Knights cut short pre-Christmas training last week, calling off a planned army camp in Brisbane set down for last weekend after making the decision on Thursday to send players home as a safety precaution following the outbreak of the virus in Newcastle.

It came after development player Chris Vea'ila tested positive to COVID a week ago. A Knights staff member has also tested positive since then while the Newcastle Herald has been told a NSW Cup player is also under isolation due to a positive test.

O'Brien said there could be an opportunity to revisit the Brisbane camp in January but the welfare of the squad and the staff coming up to Christmas was the number one priority.

"The number one focus now over Christmas is to enjoy some time with family and remain as safe as possible and limit as much risk as we can," O'Brien said. "Then we come back in after the break and immediately look to having a positive January. That's where we are at.

"At the end of the day, these guys are sons, fathers, they're husbands and we have always treated them as humans first and then they are our footy players.

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"It was a commonsense call to shut down early. You don't want one of your players to be stuck in his bedroom at home and not be able to hug his kids on Christmas day.

"The call to finish a bit early, that decision was led by the leaders of our club, Bedsy [Danny Buderus] and Philip [CEO Gardner], but we all thought it was the right thing to do."

O'Brien said he and Buderus are now working on potential contingencies to try and limit the COVID impact when training resumes in early January with the centre of excellence to play a big role with the possibility the entire operation may have to go back into a bubble.

"That's our focus right now - actually putting things in place to best protect us when we come back because we don't really know what that's going to look like with COVID the way things are at the moment," he said.

"We need to give ourselves the best chance to commence training after Christmas. Potentially, that could mean another bubble but we are in a really strong situation with the centre of excellence ready to move into in January because it is a bubble.

"We won't be sharing it with anyone so in a way, it's our own sort of compound where we can lock ourselves away if that's what the situation and the NRL calls for.

"Ideally, things settle down and it doesn't come to that but at this stage, nobody really knows where things are headed with it.

"Right now, it's about trying to get in front of this the best we can and having some contingency plans available to us so the players can have a rest and know we are looking at all the scenarios we may face going forward.

"Lets just be as well equipped as we can to handle whatever is coming our way."