Mario Nichols/ Who Dat Daily.com NFL Contributor
The NFL and NFLPA has come to agreement on Covid-19 testing procedures Monday. The breakdown is that according to NFL Chief Medical Expert Dr Allen Sills “players will be tested every day for the first two weeks of training camp and it is expected that players will need more than one negative test before first being allowed to enter team facilities.”
Dr Sills also added “that at the 2-week mark, the rate of positive tests for those tested, players, coaches and staff who are in close contact with the football team — will be examined and if the rate of positive tests is below 5 percent, testing will move to every other day.” The NFL Training camps are set to start for July 28 2020.
According to NFL.com here’s a list of what was agreed upon today:
. The frequency of testing had been one of the biggest outstanding issues to be resolved between the league and the players union. Players had pushed for daily testing and one owner said late last week that teams have been told there could be a considerable number of positive tests as players travel from their homes to gather at their team facilities over the next week. But doctors for the league and the union have assured teams that once players get into the protocols and are being tested regularly, the positivity rate should drop.
If a player tests positive but has no symptoms, he can return to the facility 10 days after the initial positive test or if he receives two consecutive negative tests within five days of the initial positive test. If the player has a positive test and symptoms, he can return after at least 10 days have passed since the symptoms first appeared and at least 72 hours have passed since he last experienced symptoms.
Players who have close contact with someone who has symptoms will be tested and isolated as soon as possible. If the test is negative, and the player continues to have no symptoms, he may return to the facility but will have increased symptom monitoring and more frequent testing. If the player has close contact with someone who has a positive COVID-19 test, he will be tested and even if the test is negative and the player has no symptoms, he would need a second negative test before being allowed to return.
Players will wear proximity recording devices during all team activities — at the facility, practice, team travel — and the data from those devices will provide highly precise contract tracing information. Sills said that will help identify which other players and staff an infected player has come in closest contact with, so that they can be tested and isolated quickly. That will become especially important as practices and games begin.
Sills emphasized, though, that players and staff will still bear the responsibility of modifying their behavior at the facility and away from it, to mitigate the risk of infection.
With testing policy taken care of, the remaining issues on the table are: structure of training camp, conditioning period before players put on pads for a regular practice and the discussion on how many, if any, preseason games will be played. The NFLPA wants 0 preseason games while the NFL want 2 match ups. The time will tell on what happens next as training camp nears…
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