The NFL has three weeks to get a handle on its COVID-19 testing issues or the league risks jeopardizing its season with competitive balance problems.
The Detroit Lions were one of at least eight teams who had a player or staff member miss practice Sunday because of a false-positive coronavirus test, a league source told the Free Press.
The source did not want to be identified because he’s not authorized to speak publicly about league testing protocols.
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The unidentified player is at least the third Lion affected by a testing error since players reported to camp in late July.
The player tested negative for the virus in a follow-up point-of-care test Sunday, and is expected to rejoin the team when practice resumes Tuesday.
Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford registered a false-positive test July 31 and was placed briefly on the reserve/COVID-19 list before being cleared to return. Another player had a false positive come back on the team’s day off Wednesday.
“Saturday’s daily COVID testing returned several positives tests from each of the clubs serviced by the same laboratory in New Jersey,” the NFL said in a statement. “We are working with our testing partner, BioReference, to investigate these results, while the clubs work to confirm or rule out the positive tests. Clubs are taking immediate precautionary measures as outlined in the NFL-NFLPA’s health and safety protocols to include contact tracing, isolation of individuals and temporarily adjusting the schedule, where appropriate. The other laboratories used for NFL testing have not had similar results.”
More: Explaining Matthew Stafford’s COVID-19 false positive and the ‘nightmare’ it could create
The Chicago Bears rescheduled a Sunday morning practice for later in the day after they said they had nine false-positive COVID-19 results.
The New York Jets canceled a walk-through Saturday after receiving 10 false-positive tests but returned to the practice field Sunday.
And the Minnesota Vikings had eight players, one coach and three staff members receive positive coronavirus test results on Sunday.
As news of the rash of false positives was breaking, Lions coach Matt Patricia said before the start of practice Sunday that he was not aware of the NFL’s latest round of testing issues.
Previously, the Lions issued a strongly worded statement after Stafford’s false positive, which caused the league to change its testing protocols.
Now, players who test positive can take two COVID-19 tests on the day they receive their results. If both tests register negative, they can return to play.
Those changes, however, don’t prevent the league from having to sit potentially healthy players out of games. Had any of Sunday’s results been received on a game day in the regular season, the players, coaches and staff members who tested positive could not participate.
Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said last week in a conference call the league was “seeing a really low rate of positives” among the approximately 42,000 tests it had administered and “the positive tests that we are seeing are overwhelmingly” unconfirmed positives.
Sills said he expects the NFL’s testing protocols to continue to evolve over the course of the season, though he sounded lukewarm about incorporating a saliva test recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration into the league’s daily testing routine.
“I think the biggest consideration for us is always the accuracy of the test,” Sills said. “I personally think it’s a very exciting development and support obviously more widespread availability of affordable testing. But I just think that we will, as we said all along, continue to evaluate our protocol based on what’s coming down the pipe. But anything we do has to be filtered through that lens of having the most accurate and efficient test that we can.”
The NFL has not yet issued testing protocols for the regular season.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. The Free Press has started a new digital subscription model. Here’s how you can gain access to our most exclusive Lions content.