Several NFL teams are putting their training camp activities on hold after seeing irregularities in results from Saturday’s testing. All results in question are linked to the same New Jersey lab.
What we know:
- The NFL received several positive test results from Saturday’s round of coronavirus testing, but all of those tests were serviced by the same lab in New Jersey. This raised concerns about the efficacy of the tests and whether or not the results were reliable. The NFL investigated 77 positive test results from 11 teams. As a safety precaution, the teams affected altered or canceled their training camp plans and isolated affected players until the results could be verified.
- The NFL determined that all 77 tests in question were false positives. The league’s testing partner, BioReference, is calling the incident an “isolated contamination during test preparation”. Now that the retests have come back negative and the anxiety has settled, all players and staff members who were affected can return to normal activities after registering two negative tests.
- The NFL is working with BioReference to conduct all of its COVID-19 tests. They use five labs around the country to handle the league’s daily testing requirements. The New Jersey lab was the only one found to have produced false positives this weekend. BioReference confirmed that the incident was isolated to their New Jersey lab and that all of the results in question came back negative.
- The Minnesota Vikings, New York Jets, and Chicago Bears all had over 9 positive tests this weekend, which sounded several alarms and indicated some kind of massive outbreak. The high numbers were inconsistent with the low infection rate the NFL touted during its first month of training camp. Now that the false positives have been cleared, only three NFL players are confirmed to have COVID-19.
Although the NFL has managed to avoid outbreaks so far, this kind of testing malfunction is serious news. Commissioner Roger Goodell said “The protocols are stringent. They are designed to be that because they are for the safety of our players and personnel, including coaches. We’ll evolve as the circumstances change. We will be changing our protocols appropriately.”
