Bears among NFL teams reporting false positive tests for COVID-19
NEW YORK - The NFL revealed Sunday that several positive COVID-19 tests were found a day earlier by one of its testing partners, but that some subsequent tests had come back negative. Among teams reporting false positives, the Bears said they had nine.
The league has asked the New Jersey lab BioReference to investigate the results "while the clubs work to confirm or rule out the positive tests." The NFL did not identify the teams or say how many tests altogether were positive.
The Bears were alerted Sunday morning about the test findings and moved their practice scheduled for Sunday morning to the afternoon.
"... (E)verybody involved in the positive test, we were able to get them in and obviously get re-tested and come back with the second test, and it came back all negative," said Bears coach Matt Nagy. "So now we had to go to, 'Now, what do we do?' That's when we went ahead and figured we were able to move forward with practice. We delayed it."
The Minnesota Vikings reported 12 false positives. The New York Jets reported 10 and canceled a walk-through on Saturday night, but had a full practice Sunday morning.
The Detroit Lions had a player with a false positive test from the same lab in New Jersey and he was held out of practice Sunday, a league source told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the league and team were not disclosing test results.
The Pittsburgh Steelers said they had six false positives and those players will be back at practice Monday. The Philadelphia Eagles held out four players from working out Sunday. The Cleveland Browns initially canceled practice, but after re-testing turned up negative tests they decided to have their workout.
The number of positive COVID-19 tests from a specific facility that might actually be false demonstrates the precarious position the NFL is in less than three weeks from the regular-season opener.
Anyone testing positive for COVID-19 - even a false positive upon a retest - is required to have two more negative tests before being cleared to return.
The NFL uses BioReference for all of its COVID-19 testing, though tests are handled by labs throughout the nation to ensure teams get results quickly - hopefully within 24 hours. Heading into this weekend, there had been four confirmed positive tests for players who were at training camps.