The NFL and NFL Players Association have agreed to reduce the frequency of mandatory testing for asymptomatic vaccinated players, as part of several new changes to their testing protocols.
Players and league personnel will also have access to testing as frequently as they'd like. Additionally, the league is providing home-testing kits to athletes and their families.
“Medical information strongly indicates that this variant is significantly more contagious but possibly less severe than prior variants, particularly for people who are fully vaccinated and have received a booster shot,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a memo. “Our experience with the omicron variant is fully consistent with this expectation – while more players and staff are testing positive, roughly two- thirds of those individuals are asymptomatic, most of the remaining individuals have only mild symptoms, and the virus appears to clear positive individuals more rapidly than was true with the delta or earlier variants. In many respects, omicron appears to be a very different illness from the one that we first confronted in the spring of 2020.”
The new changes have been announced after the league had to postpone three games scheduled for this weekend due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
[Via]
