Union says 56 NFL players have tested positive for the coronavirus since training camps opened

The union clarified Thursday evening that the results reflected the number of players who tested positive, not the total number of negative tests by those players. Neither the NFLPA nor the league provided further comment on the testing results.

“We fully well expect that we will have positive cases that arise because we think that this disease will remain endemic in society,” Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said during the offseason. “And so it shouldn’t be a surprise if new positive cases arise. Our challenge is to identify them as quickly as possible and to prevent spread to any other participants.”

Players are being tested daily for at least the first two weeks of training camps under the agreement reached between the league and union. The testing frequency would be reduced to every other day thereafter if the rate of positive tests among players, coaches and other team staff members (individuals in Tiers 1 and 2, under the sport’s guidelines) is below 5 percent.

Teams are conducting training camps in their home cities at their training facilities, with strict protocols in place. Teams were given a treatment program by the league to follow if a player, coach or staffer tests positive or is found through contact tracing to have been in contact with an individual who tested positive. All players, coaches and staffers are wearing tracking devices within team facilities to assist with distancing measures and contact tracing.

Teams were given the option of having 80 players on their roster for the opening of training camp or having 90 players initially in a split-squad format.

Quarterbacks Matthew Stafford of the Detroit Lions and Gardner Minshew of the Jacksonville Jaguars were among the players placed on their teams’ covid-19 reserve lists during the early days of training camps. Those lists are all-encompassing for any player who either tests positive or is found through contact tracing to have been exposed to the virus. Both quarterbacks were later activated. Minshew told reporters he had not contracted the virus, and the Lions said that Stafford had been on the list because of a false positive testing result.