NEW YORK — A fifth major league team has been able to relax coronavirus protocols after 85% of its players and other on-field personnel completed vaccination.
Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association made the announcement Friday without identifying any teams and said seven additional teams had reached the 85% level of having received final doses and would be able to relax protocols within two weeks once they are fully vaccinated.
The New York Yankees and Detroit said last weekend they were able to relax protocols, and Milwaukee said earlier this week it had been able to relax them. Relaxed protocols include dropping the requirements for facemasks in dugouts and bullpens, and loosening restrictions on mobility during road trips.
MLB said Friday that more than 83% of all tier 1 individuals such as players, managers, coaches, athletic trainers and support personnel had been partially or fully vaccinated, up from 81% on April 30.
There were no positive results among 10,330 monitoring tests in the past week and one among staff at an alternate training site, a 0.009% positive rate.
Thus far this season, there have been 44 positive tests — 27 players and 17 staff — among 145,647 samples tested, a 0.03% positive rate. The positive tests are among 21 teams.
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