Better now than later for NFL test issue
Just as the NFL sailed with a relatively smooth summer on the COVID-19 front that suggested it might be fully equipped to pull off its plan for a complete season amid a pandemic, along came Sunday.
News streamed in with the urgency of results from the precincts reporting on Election Night: The Browns, then the Bears. The Steelers and Vikings. Jets and Bills. Patriots. Lions.
The good news is that the flood of results were pinned on two words: false positives.
There were no NFL outbreaks. At least not yet. The fire alarm was pulled for a false alarm.
Yet the reality check for the NFL – with the initial diagnosis of dozens of COVID-19 tests indicating positive cases that apparently were negative – came in the illustration of just how quickly the best-laid plans by the league and players union can collapse with a breakdown in the system.
That the multitude of apparent false positives could be traced to a single Bio-Reference laboratory in New Jersey provided the clue. The league uses about a half-dozen labs to process the tests for the 32 teams, and none of the other labs reported any dramatic spikes.
In a statement, the NFL declared that
it is working with BioReference in launching an immediate investigation. Meanwhile, affected teams went into emergency response mode as outlined in the league’s protocols.
Since training camps opened, the league has had an estimated 150,000 tests conducted on players, coaches and staff, with such an overwhelming amount of negative results that the number of players league-wide placed on the COVID-19 reserve list has dwindled to single digits.
But imagine if the rash of false positives over the weekend came three Sundays later – as in Sept. 13, the Sunday of Week 1?
Chaos. That’s what you can imagine. No, with the NFL’s COVID-19 protocols riding with the reliability of the testing process, games might be won or lost, postponed or canceled in the lab.
The weekend drama didn’t cause any camp practices to be scratched, although Cleveland was in limbo for that, and a few dozen players on the affected teams couldn’t practice.
According to the COVID-19 protocols, if a player’s positive test is presumed false, he can return after two negative tests. Many of the players who sat out Sunday were expected to return to work on Monday.
Somewhere, Matthew Stafford might be cringing. Earlier this month, the Lions’ quarterback was stung by a false positive that underscored the need for revising the protocols to add additional layers in confirming positives in individuals showing no symptoms of the novel coronavirus.
Days after the Stafford episode, the league required two confirming tests for positive cases within 24 hours – including a point-of-care test to be analyzed on site.
At the time the revised protocols were announced, Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medial adviser, acknowledged the challenge.
“We’re going to learn about testing,” Sills said during a media conference call.
Sills cautioned that each new positive result did not equate to a new case of COVID-19. In some cases, for example, an individual could be considered a “persistent positive” – someone who recovered from the coronavirus yet still showed traces of the virus up to six months later.
There’s no indication at this point that the rash of positive tests over the weekend have any type of connecting factors, such as previous exposure to COVID-19.
Yet the weekend drama surely shows the merits of daily testing, something the players union insisted on after the NFL initially wanted a limited window for daily tests. It’s also clear that the confirming tests needed to be added to the protocol.
The goal of testing, of course, is to catch the actual COVID-19 case and contain the damage by isolating the infected individual and minimizing spread.
Catching the false cases is quite the challenge, too, with a different type of potential damage.
The Bills practiced Sunday without quarterback Josh Allen, a presumed victim of a faulty test result. Quick adjustments were employed. Practice happened.
Bills general manager Brandon Beane called it a “good fire drill.”
In other words, better now than in September.