Major League Baseball employees will take part in a study testing as many as 10,000 persons for coronavirus antibodies, according to multiple reports. The study will be conducted by Stanford University, USC, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory.
The data from the study will not provide a timeline for MLB to get back on the field as the coronavirus pandemic has halted the league since March 12. According to The Post’s Joel Sherman, employees from the Yankees and Mets are among the 27 out of 30 MLB teams that are participating in the study. The 10,000 employees will vary from players, members of the front office, ushers and other stadium workers.
Researchers are trying to gain a better sense of how widespread the coronavirus is throughout the country. A rapid antibody test will be administered using kits that draw blood from a finger and provide results within a matter of minutes. The tests will determine if participants have contracted the coronavirus even if they were asymptomatic.
Each team has a medical designee who will take pictures of the results to be collected and sent to researchers within days. Surveys will also be taken, asking people their gender, their age, where they live, their ethnicity and social and economic background factors that will help the study.
Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said outside donors are funding the study and MLB voluntarily participated to help advance research that could take place sooner rather than later. The hopes are that the antibody test will help policymakers decide the right time to lift shelter-in-place guidelines implemented by states due to the pandemic.
“This is the first study of national scope where we’re going to get a read on a large number of communities throughout the United States to understand how extensive the spread of the virus has been,” Bhattacharya told ESPN. “This will be the very first of those. Why MLB versus other employers? I’ve reached out to others, but MLB moved by far the fastest. They’ve been enormously cooperative and flexible. We’re trying to set up a scientific study that would normally take years to set up, and it’s going to be a matter of weeks.”
MLB teams are not required to divulge publicly if they are taking part in the tests, according to ESPN, and the MLB Players Association has suggested that players can participate in the study.
