The NFL and its players’ union have reached an agreement on a coronavirus testing protocol for the first two weeks of training camp. The league and the NFL Players Association will require daily testing for the opening two weeks of training camp, and after that two week period, the NFL will move its testing to every other day — if the positive test rate is below 5%. If the positive test rate is higher than 5% after two weeks, the league will continue with daily COVID-19 testing until that number lowers. If the positivity rate reaches 5% or higher at any time, the NFL will go back to daily testing until it lowers again.
Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s Chief Medical Officer, said Monday: “This is ongoing work. There’s no finish line with health and safety, and I think these protocols are living, breathing documents, which means they will change as we get new information. They will undoubtedly be changing over time, which is what we usually see in medicine.”
The agreement on a testing protocol came after a series of prominent NFL players took to social media Sunday in a coordinated effort to urge the league to listen to its experts’ guidelines on safely opening training camps during the coronavirus pandemic.
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