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NFL Is Changing Its Testing Protocol Following Matthew Stafford Gaffe

NFL Is Changing Its Testing Protocol Following Matthew Stafford Gaffe

The National Football League is changing its testing protocols to better account for false positives of Covid-19.

For players without a history of coronavirus infection who test positive but lack symptoms, the league will run two additional tests within 24 hours to ensure the result is accurate. Should both tests return negative, the individual can return to work. During that day-long period, the individual who tested positive will be isolated and kept outside the facility, he said.

Allen Sills, the league’s chief medical officer, described the measure as a “two-step confirmatory procedure” on a conference call with reporters Friday. ”Not every positive test result means a new Covid infection,” he said.

The change comes a week after Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was erroneously put on the Covid-19 reserve list following a false positive. Stafford was removed from the list on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Lions.

Kelly Stafford, the quarterback’s wife, called out the NFL earlier this week on her Instagram account for the handling of his results.

“I was approached in a grocery store and told I was ‘endangering others,’ my kids were harassed and kicked off a playground, I was told I needed to wait in my car when trying to pick up food, and people closest to us had to get tested just so they could go back to work,” she wrote. “I blame the NFL for not holding themselves accountable. These are people’s lives and livelihoods that are in those results in THEIR test sites.”

NFL Is Changing Its Testing Protocol Following Matthew Stafford Gaffe

The new procedure aims to hone in on “persistent positive” and “unconfirmed positive” tests, in which someone with a previous Covid-19 infection who has since recovered can still test positive intermittently. Scientists believe in that case, screenings are probably picking up dead viral particles that linger in the body, but patients may not even know they were previously infected, Sills said.

“Our opportunity here is to really contribute to the medical knowledge about these issues and to do so in a very short time,” Sills said, adding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others were eager to see the league’s data because “that’s really data that hasn’t really been collected” in widespread screening programs.

U.S. testing infrastructure has struggled to meet a surge in demand from individuals with and without symptoms since the country began reopening. One challenge has been getting timely results, with test-takers complaining of waits that are more than a week.

The NFL has performed about 75,000 tests for its players, coaches and staff over the last two weeks, a measure that’s paired with other safety precautions such as face coverings, Sills said. The “overwhelming majority” of screenings have returned negative, he said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.