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Chicago White Sox Head Physician Details MLB Partnership with COVID19 Researchers
Date posted: 4/17/2020
Last updated: 4/17/2020
April 17, 2020
Via Scot Gregor, Daily Herald
This should be the third full week of the regular season, but baseball has been paused since March 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Players have made two things quite clear.
No. 1, they want to get back to work as soon as possible.
No. 2, they want to be safe.
On the latter point, more testing is still needed before the game—and society—can get back to normal. MLB has been a huge help on that end.
In a span of just three weeks, an estimated 10,000 employees from a reported 27 of 30 major-league teams were tested for COVID-19 antibodies.
The White Sox were one those teams. Dr. Nik Verma, sports medicine surgeon with Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush and head team physician for the Sox, coordinated the effort out of Chicago.
"This is not a priority test," Verma said. "There was some controversy when the NBA teams got tested awhile back. This is not preferential treatment. This was not in any way intended to restart major-league baseball. This was major-league baseball partnering with researchers to help provide answers that the entire country needs.
