A 2:51 A.M. False Alarm for Bears Provides Real Scare

Bears found out in the wee hours about positive tests for COVID-19, but they later provided to be part of a number of league-wide false-positives at a New Jersey lab handling NFL tests.

Bears coach Matt Nagy woke with his wife, Stacey, pointing out the vibrating phone to him Sunday at 2:51 a.m.

"And usually when there's a call at 2:51 in the morning, there's something to it," Nagy said Sunday afternoon after his team's light practice.

When it's head athletic trainer Andre Tucker on the other end it really can't be good, and especially now because he serves as team COVID-19 officer.

Nine players and/or staff members had tested positive for COVID-19 but further testing showed it to be a false positive. They couldn't participate in Sunday's walk-through practice due to league protocol calling for false-positive tests to be handled over a 24-hour period.

It was part of a league-wide situation involving problems with false-positive tests at a New Jersey lab handling NFL COVID-19 testing.  It's known 10 teams were affected by this false testing.

"This is definitely the year of the contingency plan."

"So basically when you get that call, you're trying to figure out who they (infected) are then really from there you have to come up with a plan," Nagy said. "And then, so, really for us it's: 'OK, what's the best thing moving forward, what does that mean?' Well, having early morning practices and a lot of coaches and players getting here early in the morning to do their COVID testing, we wanted to make sure that we called people before they left their house to come in here.

"So we put together a pretty good action plan with our head of security and we just discussed on how we wanted to handle it."

Team leaders were contacted and they contacted players to make certain they knew first what had happened, then a Zoom meeting was held for players and the organization. They had 140 people on this 9 a.m. meeting.

Further testing was done of the nine in question and when tests proved negative, they knew they were in the clear. The 9:20 a.m. practice was moved to 1:30 p.m.

It was supposed to be a light practice, anyway, because they'd gone through their first controlled scrimmage on Saturday and it involved full contact at different points. It became virtually a walk-through, lasting just an hour.

League testing is done daily through Sept. 5 under the testing program agreed to by the league and the NFL Players Association. BioReference Laboratories is the company handling the testing with results being determined at various BioReference facilities based on geographic location.

"This was the first time we’ve been going through this so I was really just happy with how we handled it," Nagy said. "Considering everything, it went really well. Now we just keep moving forward."

Nagy did not want to release the names of the players, coaches and/or staff members who were said to have tested positive.

After going through this fire drill of sorts, he feels the organization is about ready for anything.

"You know, if you go into the season as a leader, or really anybody in this building, and you kind of prep for this stuff then it doesn’t catch you off guard," Nagy said. "This is definitely the year of the contingency plan.

"You have to have what-ifs and backups really in everything you do, whether it's positions, or whether it's scenarios of what could happen."

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