NFL teams could see more false-positive COVID-19 tests, potentially forcing players to miss regular season games, until the league institutes a new testing system.
The Athletic reports that last weekend's rash of false-positives due to testing errors could persist into the regular season. “Professional sports teams are using testing as a way to minimize the risk of transmission and acquisition of the virus. But it is important to remember that when you are doing this type of testing, and running this many tests on this many asymptomatic individuals, you are going to get false positives,” Dr. Amash Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told The Athletic. “You’re going to have to have a way of adjudicating those to see if they are false positives, or are true positives.” Infectious disease experts "aren’t surprised that the NFL’s testing pool continues to return even a relatively small number of these inaccurate results," which will continue unless and until the league adopts a rapid testing system, like the saliva test developed at Yale University with funding from the NBA.
SOURCE: The Athletic
Aug 25, 2020, 8:59 AM ET