Six people from three clubs in the top flight have tested positive for coronavirus, the Premier League has confirmed.
The COVID-19 tests were conducted on Sunday and Monday as part of the league’s Project Restart plans.
The Premier League club’s partnership with the Prenetics consortium are due to take place twice a week from now on. Forty tests will be carried out at each club in each session.
A statement read: “The Premier League can today confirm that on Sunday 17 May and Monday 18 May, 748 players and club staff were tested for COVID-19. Of these, six have tested positive from three clubs.
“Players or club staff who have tested positive will now self-isolate for a period of seven days.
“The Premier League is providing this aggregated information for the purposes of competition integrity and transparency.
“No specific details as to clubs or individuals will be provided by the League and results will be made public in this way after each round of testing.”
The first step of a comeback to training involves small groups of up to five players working together, while practising social distancing, with sessions to last no more than 75 minutes for any one player.
The 20 top-flight clubs unanimously agreed the protocols for small group training to resume and will gather again on May 26 to discuss protocols for contact training.
June 12 has been mentioned as a resumption date, but the league’s chief executive Richard Masters has said that was only ever to be treated as a ‘staging post’.
Premier League clubs will be subjected to spot-checks to ensure they are complying with training protocols, while the league has also committed to making every positive COVID-19 test public knowledge.
The positive results amounts to less than one per cent of the people who were tested.
Players were allowed to report for the first phase of training on Tuesday, something that Crystal Palace winger Andros Townsend has welcomed.
He said in a talk show: “We’ve been quite lucky at Crystal Palace; the doctor, the manager, the chairman, it’s all been transparent.
“We’ve had regular Zoom conference calls, they’ve laid everything on the table and I’m in no doubt that, when I do return and if that is tomorrow morning, I’m probably returning to the safest workplace probably in the country at the minute.
“We are going to get swab tested regularly, I think twice a week, so there’s no really much room for an outbreak to spread to the Premier League in my eyes.
“Everything is being done that can be done.”
