Testing issues yielded test fire drill

ALLEN PARK, MICH. » In twoplus weeks, the NFL kicks off its season. That doesn’t leave the league much time to resolve significant issues about its COVID-19 testing procedures.

BioReference Laboratories, which is conducting tests for the league, said Aug. 24 an isolated contamination caused 77 “most likely false positive results,” at its lab in New Jersey. Eleven clubs were affected, and the tests were re-examined and found to be false positives.

“This has been an interesting dynamic because what happened this weekend gave the NFL an opportunity to do a sort of a test fire drill,” noted Dr. Larry Caplin, who said he consults nearly 20 NFL players and their union about testing protocols, “It exposed issues and potential vulnerabilities in their process, and a lot of it relates to the speed in which they’re able to confirm results.”

Among teams reporting false positives, the Vikings had 12 team members, the Jets 10, the Bears nine and the Lions one. In all, 44 players and 33 club personnel drew false positives.

“It’s probably good that it happened now since we’re able to adjust and adapt and figure out the things if it did happen during the season, and kind of what we would do from there,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said.

Five labs across the country process PCR tests for the league’s 32 teams and only the New Jersey facility had false positives on Saturday.

The Jets canceled a walkthrough Aug. 22, but had a full practice Aug. 23 after the previously positive tests came back negative. The Bears moved their practice scheduled for Sunday morning to the afternoon.

The Browns initially canceled practice, but after retesting turned up negative tests they decided to have their workout — without their coach.

Browns coach Kevin Stefanski had a false positive test, triggering anxiety for him at home where he lives with his wife and three children.

“I can laugh about it now, but truly it wasn’t fun to have that phone call very early in the morning and not get news that it was potentially an error until later,” he said.

Stefanski said he immediately left his house in order to not put his family at risk. The former Vikings assistant went to a condominium near the team’s facility where he stayed before moving his family to Ohio from Minnesota in the offseason. And, it took four hours before Stefanski learned he was negative.

The 38-year-old Stefanski praised the Browns for the way they handled “a fire drill” with their virus protocols, adding that being held out of practice gave him and his staff a chance to carry out contingency plans if any coaches are out.

“Everything went off without a hitch and I was able to watch 7 on 7 on my iPad about 10 minutes after it ended,” he said. “So, a very unique kind of like a bad dream when you know practice is going on and you’re not there. It felt pretty strange.”

As the NFL moves toward the end of training camp and the start of the season, the scope of testing may expand to family and friends of players.

“I’ve had discussions with senior people at the NFLPA and we’re talking about some recommendations that the league hasn’t put into place yet around creating a secondary bubble,” said Caplin, who has 30 years of logistics experience and is the CEO of Pennsylvania-based DOCS Health that helps schools, the military and other clients with healthcare. “That would include potentially testing the people that the players interface with on a regular basis when they’re home.”

Caplin, though, acknowledged there is not a foolproof system in place for any entity to test for COVID-19.

“There is no perfect test, start there,” he said. “All testing has potential to have false positives — or false negatives.”

Bills quarterback Josh Allen lamented having a false positive test that kept him off the field Aug. 23.

“I was super frustrated that I wasn’t here,” Allen said. “Those are reps that I can’t get back. At the same time, I think it was a good opportunity for our team to kind of go through a day of adversity like this ... in case it were a game day.”