MLB reports 66 positive COVID-19 tests in final wave of intake testing
The final round of COVID-19 intake testing in MLB showed 66 positives in 3,748 total samples, a positive rate of 1.8 percent, the league and its players association jointly announced Friday morning.
Of the 66 positive tests, 58 were players and eight were staff members. There was at least one positive test on 27 different teams.
There were 38 positive tests from 3,185 samples last week, a rate of 1.2 percent. The numbers were in addition to more than 40 positive cases prior to camp.
Intake testing for all 30 teams is now complete and players will move on to monitoring testing, which will be done every other day for Tier 1 individuals and multiple times a week for those who have moved on to Tier 2.
For those already in the monitoring phase, the league said 17 of the 7,401 tests were positive and 13 of those were players. It’s a new positive rate of 0.2 percent for those already in camps. Those who test positive are isolated from their teams during a quarantine period so that virus does not spread.
Combined, 11,149 tests have been conducted and the number of positives is 83, a percent positive rate of .7 percent. The acceptable rate is 5 percent. Most of those have been players and 28 of the 30 teams have a positive test.
Teams voiced frustrations this week at COVID-19 testing delays. Issues with shipping and processing the tests forced the Oakland A’s to push back full-team workouts and Washington Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle raised concerns his tests results weren’t back within the 24-48 hour window.
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