D-backs among teams participating in coronavirus testing study

Major League Baseball teams are participating in a study of the coronavirus that will test hundreds of people — including players — from the various clubs for antibodies.

The Arizona Diamondbacks are among the teams participating in the study. Stanford University is one of the institutions running the study.

Up to 10,000 people are part of the study, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who also reported that the goal of the study is to get a better measure of how many people nationwide may have had coronavirus, since some who contract the disease are asymptomatic.

As explained by Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall talking to Arizona Sports’ Doug & Wolf, the test involves drawing blood from the finger and putting it in a machine that runs the test in about 10 minutes.

“I took part in that test the other day, I took it at home, Amy and I did, and we saw that we were negative,” D-backs president and CEO Derrick Hall told Arizona Sports’ Doug & Wolf. “And I’ve talked to most of our employees — and they don’t have to tell you what they are, they don’t have to, they’re protected — but most have said, and everybody I’ve talked to has been negative.

“So we all have the same feeling. Like maybe we wanted to know we had it and just didn’t have symptoms. Now I’m walking and I’m trying to stay even further from people, ‘I don’t have it, I haven’t had it, don’t give it to me.'”

In Arizona, the number of reported coronavirus cases surpassed the 4,000 mark on Thursday. In New York state, cases were north of 200,000. California has more than 24,000. Multiple other states have reported case totals of five figures.

“I think doing a study on the antibodies is really smart, because we’re going to know if we are indeed building immunity to it as we do with other viruses. So I think you were right when you talked about it the other day, Doug, that it’s going to tell you one of the two extremes: Either, ‘Wow, a lot of people have had it and gotten over it, let’s not be so panicked, let’s get back out there and on with our lives and open the country up,’ or, ‘Not enough have, and oh, this thing’s still going.’

“But I think we’re in a really different position here, which is another reason why so many people have also looked at Arizona as a spot that has done things right and as a spot that’s going to continue to […].”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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