Chicago Bears: The team handled nine false-positive COVID tests correctly
The Chicago Bears had nine false-positive COVID tests on Sunday
The Chicago Bears like every team in the NFL has had to put special practices in place to handle the current COVID-19 pandemic. From an NFL standpoint, testing is the key factor right now. The league has not had a player test positively since it started testing protocols for training camps. There have only been a handful of positive tests among other personnel. Overall, it seems the league has done a good job thus far.
When we look at how the Chicago Bears are handling the situation, it seems they are taking all the right precautions within Halas Hall. Temperature checks, bracelets that can track who a player has been in contact with, spreading out the players with an additional locker room area, a new gym with individual workout areas and more are ways the team has changed things up this year. Even with all of this in place, the team still had to deal with nine positive COVID tests this past Sunday.
How did the Chicago Bears handle the positive tests that were later found to be false?
On Sunday, the Chicago Bears had plans for a morning practice. This was going to be the first after a “game-like” practice on Saturday that allowed Foles to pull the quarterback competition back to even. However, Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace had to scramble when news came in that morning that nine players and staff tested positive for COVID-19 from the day before. Rather than panicking, the Bears remained calm and made what looked to be all the right decisions.
Bears had nine players/staff text positive for COVID but, upon further review, nine results were false positives, the team said. Out of an abundance of caution, they postponed this morning’s practice to this afternoon at 1:30pm.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) August 23, 2020
Matt Nagy spoke in his press conference about how he received a call about the situation at 2:51 a.m. on Sunday. This is when everything turned upsidedown. Once the call happened, the team had to find out who tested positive and who had those people been in contact with recently. The Bears then made an action plan with their head of security. They were able to get in touch with everyone necessary and instead of canceling practice as a whole, they were able to just delay it.
Next. Five CFL players who deserve tryouts with Bears. dark
This shows some great leadership as the team was eventually able to rule out the tests as a false-positive. It seems the league had an issue with one testing facility in New Jersey that impacted more than just the Bears. With a quarterback competition taking place, the Bears need as many reps as possible to determine if Mitch Trubisky or Nick Foles will be under center Week 1. With the competition essentially even, we might not know who will start for another two weeks.