Vikings News: 8 players held out of practice after COVID-19 test results

Multiple Minnesota Vikings players missed Sunday’s practice due to recent test results.

So far this year, the Minnesota Vikings haven’t been too heavily impacted by a member of their organization testing positive for the COVID-19 virus.

Vikings head trainer Eric Sugarman had to miss some time due to testing positive for the virus back in late July and reserve linebacker Cameron Smith is the biggest name on the team’s roster who will miss the 2020 season following a positive test. However, Smith not playing this year is actually due to a heart condition that was discovered after he tested positive for COVID-19.

For the last few days, Minnesota hasn’t even had any players on their Reserve/COVID-19 list. But that could change following some news that dropped on Sunday.

Vikings News: Multiple players have potentially tested positive for COVID-19

Prior to Sunday’s training camp practice, the Vikings announced that eight players, one coach, and three members of the team’s staff have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.

Minnesota held out the eight players for Sunday’s practice and they are following the proper league protocol as they wait and see if any of these test results were actually false positives.

After weeks of testing around the NFL, the league’s positive test rate for the virus was only around one percent, which is great. However, there has been a string of false positive tests recently from multiple NFL teams that have all come from the same testing lab in New Jersey.

The Buffalo Bills, Chicago Bears, New York Jets, and Pittsburgh Steelers are among the teams who have been notified by this specific lab that a number of their players have tested positive for COVID-19, only to later find out that these were just false positives.

At least 10 teams, including the Vikings, are believed to be affected by the recent testing results coming out of this specific lab in New Jersey.

This isn’t to say that none of Minnesota’s recent positive COVID-19 tests are assumed to all be false positives though. The Vikings have had players and staff members test positive for the virus in the past, so this could be the case for some of them once again.

But the fact that multiple teams around the NFL have been reporting that the positive results received from this lab in New Jersey have turned out to actually be false positives, it appears as though there’s a possibility this could also be the final outcome for Minnesota recent test results.