Myles Garrett believes it was only a matter of time before the Cleveland Browns found themselves in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak.
The Browns defensive end, speaking to reporters Thursday, blamed the NFL’s testing policy for the Browns’ current situation — with 19 players testing positive for the virus over the last two weeks, according to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com.
The league required vaccinated players to be tested for the virus just once a week, while unvaccinated players were ordered to be tested daily.
“The lack of testing that we’ve done all year, I kind of feel like has led to this point,” Garrett said, via Cabot. “Only testing one time a week and guys doing their own thing on Monday and Tuesday with their time off, it was kind of a recipe for disaster.”
The league and the NFL Players Association on Thursday agreed to new rules to try to stem the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak across the league. According to ESPN’s Dan Graziano, teams that have a COVID-19 outbreak will be required to complete daily testing.
But with the increase in testing comes a change to return-to-play policies for vaccinated players: the most notable of which is that a person who tests positive but is vaccinated can be cleared to rejoin the team after two negative tests 24 hours apart.
Unvaccinated individuals must continue to remain away from the team for 10 days following a positive test.
The NFL saw at least 100 players placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list this week.
