The overall positivity rate for the NFL’s coronavirus testing program has been 0.46%, well below the threshold set this summer for preventing outbreaks at team facilities.
Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, reported the following during a conference call Wednesday with reporters:
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By Tuesday, the league had performed 109,075 COVID-19 tests.
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The positivity rate of 0.46% includes all players, coaches and staff.
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The player’s positivity rate was 0.81%.
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During the initial intake process, the league tested 9,983 people. The positive rate for those tests was generally 1.7% and 1.9% for players.
Sills said he was unaware of the “serious” illness for any league employee. The competition still operates through its data reporting system, and for now the positive tests include “persistent” cases representing infections that have been present for months, as well as “unconfirmed” cases, also called “false positions”.
The NFL will eventually eliminate these cases from new infections to get a clearer view of viral movement through teams.
Players are just starting out with traditional football practices, which will make it harder to stay socially distant throughout the workday. Even Sills said the league is encouraged by the early test results, which prove that players who arrived at team facilities from all over the country were largely infection-free and have prevented the virus for the most part since then.
“The income numbers, we were pleasantly surprised at how many positive tests we had,” Sills said. “And since that time reflects that level of positivity … our players, staff and coaches have done a great job of staying uninfected.”
The NFL tests players every day since camp opened. It had agreed with the NFLPA to delay testing after every other day when the positive field fell below 5%, a threshold that would suggest that the virus is under control within team facilities. But the parties agreed to continue with daily testing by at least Sept. 5.
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