The NFL Weighs Less Covid Testing—Not More—to Thwart Disruptions – The Wall Street Journal

Moving away from testing would be a high-profile and potentially divisive shift for the NFL. Earlier in the pandemic, it was envied for testing employees daily in order to keep playing. It now risks a new wrath by reducing its testing to continue playing in the era of vaccines. 

Yet as the rapid spread of the Omicron variant takes hold, it could provide a more nuanced option for life going ahead that acknowledges the public’s waning appetite for lengthy quarantines and cancellations at a time when  most people have the option of protecting themselves from illness with shots. 

 “We can’t apply 2020 solutions to the 2021 problems that we’re having,” NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said Wednesday. “We’re often at the tip of the spear in seeing some of these changes before they show up in other elements of society because we do have so many tools at our disposal.” 

The NFL’s possible move raises the question of whether it could be an acceptable compromise to let fully vaccinated asymptomatic people play or party on—as long as it’s only with other fully vaccinated people who face low risks from the virus. . 

In a league where almost 95% of players and 100% of staff are vaccinated, the problem isn’t individuals getting sick. It’s players getting removed from action when they test positive despite feeling completely healthy. 

Two-thirds of the players who have tested positive this week are asymptomatic, Sills said. The other third, he said, are suffering very mild symptoms. 

Yet under the current protocols, all individuals who test positive have to isolate.

That has led the league to wonder: Is it over-testing? The question has been at the heart of negotiations between the NFL and the NFL Players Association this week as the surge in Covid-19 cases rocked both the country and the sport. 

The league took a small step in that direction on Thursday when it announced that some fully vaccinated players who tested positive, but had relatively little virus in their samples, would be allowed back onto the field. The thinking is that their positive test didn’t necessarily mean they were infectious, and that the risk they posed to other vaccinated players was very low. Ignoring the possibility of positive tests altogether would be an extension of that thinking. 

It’s an idea that drew support from

George Rutherford,

professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco​—who emphasized that his backing was contingent on near-100% boosted vaccination rates. 

“If everybody’s fully vaccinated [including a booster], I could certainly understand how you could get away without testing,” he said. “I think you might be able to tolerate a slightly less aggressive disease control approach.”

Under one scenario, asymptomatic players who are vaccinated wouldn’t have to undergo routine testing as long as they feel no symptoms. Those individuals wouldn’t have to get tested weekly as they were in the past, though they still may be subject to spot tests from time to time. 

A significant concern with this strategy may be treating individuals who have not received a booster shot the same as those who have. Early research into Omicron has also shown that people who aren’t boosted have a lower level of protection against the new variant.

The NFL’s own antibody study on staff members showed the waning immunity from the standard shot regimen while also showing that antibody levels were far higher—and lasted longer—in people who have gotten boosted. A recent memo from the league also required eligible staff to get booster shots, though it stopped short of requiring that for players. 

The same question has reverberated around other sports leagues. A surge of cases across the NBA compelled the league to update its testing protocols for the two weeks after Christmas. Under the new guidance, boosted players aren’t subject to the daily testing required of fully vaccinated players, though there may be exceptions for teams battling potential outbreaks. 

The idea for scaling back testing has met some pushback. Before the season—and before Covid-19 was raging inside locker rooms—the NFLPA had pushed for daily testing. That’s why the discussions between the league and its union have ranged from increasing testing to doing it in a more targeted manner. 

Daily testing was a critical tool as the NFL navigated its first pandemic season in 2020. It allowed the league to quickly remove positive personnel and—along with various social distancing, masking and contact tracing measures—thwart the spread of the virus inside clubs. 

That changed in 2021 to account for the widespread availability of safe vaccines that large clinical trials showed were effective at preventing serious illness due to the virus. Under the current rules, the small number of unvaccinated players are tested daily while vaccinated players are tested once a week, though that can increase in outbreak scenarios. 

The new testing cadence wasn’t problematic as the league coasted through most of its season. That changed this week when the Los Angeles Rams, Cleveland Browns and Washington Football team experienced outbreaks that led to the first game postponements of the season. Such postponements would, theoretically, be avoidable if asymptomatic and fully vaccinated players weren’t tested and removed from action as a result of their positive tests. 

Sills noted Wednesday that he works in healthcare at a major academic medical center that doesn’t deploy surveillance testing of asymptomatic doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers. 

“We’re always trying to align ourselves with what healthcare is doing,” he said.

Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com and Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com