Buffalo Bills News Recap: Buffalo Bills affected by testing issues
These are some of the top Buffalo Bills news headlines from the past week in the latest Monday Morning Charge.
In a fluid training camp in the NFL where teams must take measures to ensure players test negative for COVID-19, we learned that it is not that easy as the Buffalo Bills were one of multiple teams that had false-positive tests for the virus over the weekend.
On Sunday, Buffalo Bills practice was supposed to start at 10 A.M. but it was pushed back an hour as the Bills tried to gather more information with complications with the player testing.
Tom Pelissero of The NFL Network released a statement from the NFL on Twitter saying that the NFL has altered or cancelled football activities today due to their New Jersey COVID testing lab’s results.
Several NFL teams are altering or cancelling football activities today after irregularities in results from Saturday’s COVID-19 test results from the same lab in New Jersey. Statement from the NFL: pic.twitter.com/RhwzHQVsUA
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) August 23, 2020
According to Pelissero, the COVID-19 testing from Saturday returned multiple positive tests. He goes on to note that all teams are taking precautionary measures outlined in the NFL’s safety protocol to ensure contact tracing, isolation of the infected individuals and scheduled adjustment were appropriate. GM Brandon Beane announced to the media that their team was one of the multiple who were directly affected by the results.
It is believed that this impacted four players including Josh Allen, Harrison Phillips, Vernon Butler and Quinton Jefferson. As Maddy Glab of BuffaloBills.com notes, these four players missed practice due to undisclosed reasons.
Now, the league in partnership with their testing partner, BioReference, is trying to corner the testing issue. Tom Pelissero provided an update Sunday night that 77 tests across 11 NFL teams were impacted. Every person was retested and every single one came back negative which is good news and appears this was an issue within the lab.
A total of 77 tests from 11 NFL teams processed by the same New Jersey lab came back positive from Saturday's COVID-19 testing, per league source.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) August 24, 2020
All 77 individuals underwent an additional point of care test -- and all tested negative.