October 22, 2020

Mitigating a COVID-19 Outbreak Among Major League Baseball Players — United States, 2020

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Transmission

Keywords (Tags): sports, transmission

• An outbreak investigation of players and employees from three Major League Baseball teams did not find any secondary transmission from cases on the index team during field play over 11 hours and 8 minutes with 2 opposing teams. The outbreak had a 14.4% total attack rate (21 of 146 total exposed) from the index patient from Team A. A genomic analysis of 18 of 20 residual samples revealed the cases were consistent with a super-spreader event. Interactions outside of game play were the likely source of transmission within the affected team. Among 19 of 21 persons diagnosed with COVID-19, symptoms developed an average of 2.3 days after testing positive.

Murray et al. (Oct 23, 2020). Mitigating a COVID-19 Outbreak Among Major League Baseball Players — United States, 2020. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942a4.htm?s_cid=mm6942a4_x