NFL chief medical officer: League must 'double down' to prevent future COVID-19 outbreaks

With the NFL and NFL Players Association investigating a potential COVID-19 outbreak within the Las Vegas Raiders that caused the league to move Sunday's Las Vegas-Tampa Bay Buccaneers game from prime time to the afternoon, NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills explained to NFL Network's Judy Battista on Thursday how the league has improved health and safety protocols that teams must follow to complete a season unlike any other. 

"We trying to prevent outbreaks," Sills said during an appearance on "NFL Now," per Nick Shook of the league's official website. "... But as we've gone through these 12 weeks that we've been doing this, we've learned a lot, and part of that is that not every close contact is created equal. Close contacts can actually be further classified into those that we call high risk.

"In those situations, we feel like there's a particularly high risk to the individual of contracting the virus. So in the tweak that we made to the protocol last week, we're now taking those individuals who we deem as high risk and actually isolating them from five days after the exposure as well, while we continue to test them, because we think that's the period of highest vulnerability where they themselves could test positive and then possibly expose others."

The Raiders have placed rookie cornerback Damon Arnette, offensive tackle Trent Brown, safety Johnathan Abram, and four others on the reserve/COVID-19 list heading into Sunday's contest against Tampa Bay. That game remains on the schedule as of Thursday evening. 

"As soon as we get a positive test, we provisionally identify potential high-risk close contacts, and we remove all those individuals right away," Sills told Battista. 

"And then there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into really fine-tuning that high-risk contact list. That includes, obviously, the KINEXON proximity tracking device data, but it also includes in-person interviews with those individuals, asking them about who they were around and the situations, and it includes video review. We take video from inside the facility and on the practice field and try to look for exposures there.

"So we take all of that information together, and then we take that preliminary list and determine a final list of high-risk contacts. So that's the same process that we've gone through in the Las Vegas situation."

Sills echoed comments made by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in a memo sent to teams after a virus outbreak within the Tennessee Titans threatened the integrity of the season: 

"We're all going to have to double down on our efforts. This is getting harder. It's getting harder because everyone is more exposed outside the facility. We've seen people with babysitters and other home service providers that have created exposure, so we're just going to have to double down on our mitigations efforts both at the facility and when players, coaches, and staff are away from the facility and make sure that we quickly report any symptoms.

"We know going into cold and flu season, we will have people that have symptoms. It's just incumbent on everybody to quickly report those symptoms because, in today's day and time, it's COVID until proven otherwise."

Last week, the NFL declared that personnel, including players, who show symptoms typical of COVID-19 infections must isolate even if they test negative for the virus. Meanwhile, Goodell has threatened to remove draft picks and even rule a game a forfeit if a team can't play because of coronavirus-related concerns linked with violations of safety guidelines. 

"Simply put, compliance is mandatory," Goodell wrote in the previously mentioned memo.