Major League Baseball and the Players Association jointly announced the final coronavirus (COVID-19) test results of the intake screening period.
During the completed intake screening, a total of 3,748 samples were tested. Sixty-six of them came back positive, which equates to 1.8% of the participants.
Fifty-eight of the 66 positives were players and eight were staff members. All-in-all, 27 different clubs had an individual test positive in intake screening.
At the conclusion of the intake screening process, covered individuals advanced to the monitoring testing phase, which tested Tier 1 individuals every other day and Tier 2 individuals multiple times per week.
A total of 7,401 samples were collected and tested; 17 of them were new positives (0.2%). Thirteen of the 17 positives were players and the remaining four belonged to staff members. Ten clubs had an individual test positive during Monitoring Testing.
When combining the totals of intake screening and monitoring testing, the total number of positive tests is 83. That’s good for only 0.7% of the 11,149 samples collected since the beginning of intake screening on June 27.
Among the 83 positives, 71 were players and 12 belong to staff members. Of the 30 MLB teams, 28 of them had an individual test positive in intake screening or during monitoring testing.
While the numbers look promising, the testing process hasn’t been smooth for certain teams. At least a half-dozen teams, including the Oakland Athletics, Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals were forced to cancel workouts this week while waiting for test results to arrive.
MLB attributed the delays to the Fourth of July weekend, which slowed up delivery and shipping services.
For the Los Angeles Dodgers, receiving coronavirus test results in a timely fashion has not been an issue.
“I’m not totally in tune with what’s going on outside of our organization, but I do know for us, Tier 1 and 2 people, the intake testing all came back and the people who tested negative were allowed into the facility,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recently said.
“We got our second wave of results [Monday] and I would assume the same protocols — the negative tests — those guys would be allowed in. I think we’ve been fortunate in the sense that the testing has been expedited and fluid.”
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