The company that handles the NFL’s testing program for the novel coronavirus said Monday that the league’s positive tests over the weekend were “most likely false positive results” related to “an isolated contamination” in a New Jersey lab.
Those individuals took subsequent point-of-care tests, processed at teams’ facilities, and all were negative. All tests at the New Jersey lab — one of the five used nationwide by the NFL for its 32 teams — were being retested and, to that point, all had been negative, the person said.
“Our investigation indicated that these were most likely false positive results, caused by an isolated contamination during test preparation in the New Jersey laboratory,” BioReference Laboratories said in a written statement Monday from its executive chairman, Jon R. Cohen.
The BioReference statement said that “subsequent testing has indicated that the issue has been resolved” and added: “All individuals impacted have been confirmed negative and informed.”
That came after a weekend of unrest for the teams involved. Chicago Bears announced they had nine “false positives” in their testing results and postponed a training camp practice scheduled for Sunday morning. The Buffalo Bills said they pushed back their practice by an hour. The Cleveland Browns delayed football activities until Sunday afternoon. The New York Jets, Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings said they also had positive tests.
“Saturday’s daily COVID testing returned several [positive] tests from each of the clubs serviced by the same laboratory in New Jersey,” the NFL said in a written statement earlier Sunday. “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.”
NFL players, coaches and certain team staff members are being tested daily through at least Sept. 5 under the testing program implemented by the league and the NFL Players Association. The testing is handled by a single company, BioReference. Individual teams have their tests handled by various BioReference facilities on a geographic basis, according to a league official.
The league previously had announced testing results with low rates of positive tests. The NFL announced Aug. 12 that it had conducted 109,075 tests through the previous day, with a positive-test rate of 0.46 percent for all personnel and 0.81 percent for players.
Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday that the league continued to see a “really low rate of positives” in its daily testing of players, coaches and staffers.
That changed with Saturday’s results.
“This morning we learned yesterday’s Covid-19 testing identified nine players/staff as positive,” the Bears said in a statement Sunday. “We followed additional NFL-NFLPA testing protocol and confirmed all nine results as false positives. Out of an abundance of caution, we postponed this morning’s practice to this afternoon at 1:30 p.m.”
The Browns initially canceled Sunday’s practice but said later they would resume football activities Sunday afternoon.
“We’ve concluded our re-testing of each initial presumptive positive result from yesterday among players, coaches and staff,” the Browns said in a statement. “All have come back as negative, which is consistent with the irregularities across the league from multiple teams. As a result, we are reopening our building and will resume football activities this afternoon. As per protocol, the individuals with test results in question may not reenter the building until they receive another negative test result tomorrow.”
The Bills opted to hold practice Sunday with some players missing, according to General Manager Brandon Beane.
“We’re going to be missing a few guys at practice today,” Beane said in a video conference call with reporters. “I know the league put out a statement that there was some issues at one of the labs. I think there’s 10 or 11 teams. We’re one of those. So that’s why we initially [are] trying to get things figured out. We backed practice up an hour. We’ve gone through a lot of extra point-of-care testing that we’re able to do here just to help get some of the people back in the building that were in close contact. But we’ll still be missing some players out there today.”
The Bills considered canceling practice but then decided to proceed, Beane said.
“We’re just trying to be very cautious,” he said. “We’ve been open with our team. The league jumped on this early to let us know that it wasn’t just our team. It’s a lot of teams. I think some went ahead and canceled the day. We did talk about that at one point. But as we got more information, we felt like it was more of a lab issue and not a true issue with our guys currently.”
Jets Coach Adam Gase told reporters that his team had 10 false-positive results and canceled a walk-through Saturday night. The Steelers said they also were affected. “On Saturday, we had six players absent from practice due to our adherence to NFL COVID-19 protocol,” General Manager Kevin Colbert said in a written statement. “None of those players were required to be placed on Reserve/COVID-19 and will be returning to meetings today and practice on Monday.”
Vikings Coach Mike Zimmer said in a video conference with reporters that his team had a dozen positive tests — by eight players, one coach and three staff members. “We’re just following protocol and doing what the league gives us the guidance with,” Zimmer said.
The league modified its testing procedures this month. Under the revision, the NFL said a positive test by an asymptomatic individual with no known history of infection would be followed by two confirmatory tests taken soon thereafter. That came soon after Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford spent time on the covid-19 reserve list for what the Lions called a false-positive test.
The NFL season is scheduled to begin Sept. 10 with teams playing in their home cities and in their own stadiums.
