David Chao, MD: NFL Reports Remarkable 0 Positives in First Return of Covid Testing

The mainstream public doubted that the NFL could succeed without a bubble. Through the first week of padded practice, they were wrong.

Call to the success of the NBA and NHL bubbles versus the failure of the MLB without a bubble, was commonplace. Now, maybe folks will start to believe that the NFL will start and start on time -- as we have been saying for awhile. 

For a nine-day period between August 12 and August 20th, 58,397 tests were conducted on players and personnel. Daily testing on Tier 1 and tier 2 individuals focused on 8,573 people including all players and coaches and weekly on tier 3 per.

Of the 23,260 tests on players, there were no positives. Although we did discuss the 77 false positives, one can see why the NFL either had a bad outbreak or there was testing irregularties. It turns out that there was "contamination" from the lab in New Jersey.

There were six positives among the 35,137 Tier 3 personnel with weekly testing.

This is certainly great news. Given the well under 5% positivity rate, which we knew would be the case, there is no longer a need for daily testing. These results rival the results of other professional league bubbles.

Congrats to the NFL but let's not get complacent. Travel and games have not started yet. The key is to not let the guard down and stay socially distanced. Understanding the concept of viral load, done the right way, there is less of a chance of getting COVID on Sundays than in the six days a week in the facility.

So far so good, but a long ways to go.