Just one day before players return to the ice for meaningful games, there is some good news from off the ice. TSN’s Darren Dreger reports (Twitter link) that there have been zero positive tests for COVID-19 since teams entered the bubble cities in Edmonton and Toronto last weekend.
Testing has ramped up over the past few days as Dreger notes that 1,500 tests are being conducted on a daily basis. If that number seems high, it’s not just the players for each team that are being tested, but other team officials and executives are as well. Each team was able to bring 52 people into the bubble and all of them are tested each day. If there winds up being a positive test, the league should know pretty quickly as Dreger adds that tests are being processed in 24 hours or less.
Things certainly seem to be on the right track as earlier this week, the league announced that there were no positive tests from the final week of training camp. Add that to today’s news and it’s roughly two weeks since a positive test was recorded. There is a long way to go to get to the awarding of the Stanley Cup in early October but so far, so good.
This is good news. People should be happy about this…..even the covid panic crowd! :)
I hope these test results are accurate. For NHL’ers, they can probably cope with a false positive diagnosis better than most of us on this side of the fence. But a false negative could be a time bomb for a team. As long as they can keep objective tabs on their own health and report when something is amiss, it should all be good. And, of course, watch the rest of the sports world screw it up six ways to Sunday.
@Mac – Funny though how false positives greatly outnumber false negatives. Wonder why that is? ;)
@Gbear – Both of those are a bit worrying, each for their own reasons. My sister got a false positive for a non-COVID health episode, but one of our local police officers knows a guy that got a false negative, and was hit hard by it & nearly died. I suppose if you had a false positive but didn’t feel anything you might be emboldened to do some stupid things under the feeling of invincibility. And the false negative guy could get kneecapped without warning. Just think, though, they might end up draining all of the blood out of those guys were were allegedly positive, thinking they were loaded with the valuable antibodies that the rest of us stiffs need. Then, the jig will be up! :(
@Mac – My tongue in cheek comment being that there’s no incentive to have false negatives, but lots of incentive ($$$) to have false positives. I’ve heard from more than a few people who went to get tested but couldn’t wait that long due to long lines, only to receive notice that they tested positive!
@Gbear – You mean regular folks like us? Sounds like they got long-distance tested by some joker with a FLIR camera! “Yeah, it’s calibrated to detect COVID-19, 20 and 20 1/2!” ;)
It’s like getting a commission for False positives!
Mac, I always enjoy your comments, but that line, “this side of the fence” I could not sum that up any better
@coachdit – Yeah, for those other readers who don’t get the reference, it refers to “us mere mortals”, aka The Barcalounger Bobs who make noise from our couches and dinner tables. Thanks for the support!