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The spread of coronavirus across the world has understandably dominated the news cycle for the last few weeks. We are seeing, firsthand, a pandemic all but shut down entire countries as health officials across the globe grapple with the enormity of the situation. Few industries have been impacted as much as sports has given the crowds that are usually involved. Virtually no sports are being played right now. MLB shut down spring training and delayed the season for two weeks, the NBA suspended its season early, and now there is even talk that the NFL season could be impacted. We still don’t know exactly what things will look like in a month.
However, that does not mean we are not still dealing with the fallout from coronavirus before operations were halted. That leads us to today’s news.
A minor league player in the New York Yankees system has tested positive for coronavirus, sources tell ESPN. He is the first known case in baseball. He was quarantined Friday morning after saying he was running a fever.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 15, 2020
There is a lot of information that we don’t know for certain and its possible we may never know. We don’t know the identity of the sick player nor do we know how sick he currently is. Given medical privacy laws and the understandable desire of a lot of people to not deal with the stigma of being diagnosed with a high profile illness, we may not hear anything else about the sick player unless they allow that information out there or unless their condition worsens significantly.
It is worth mentioning that Passan further reported that this Yankee minor leaguer was only on the minor league side of the Yankees’ spring training operation, so the risk to the major leaguers at the moment seems relatively low. As precaution, instead of going home like the vast majority of baseball players are currently, all Yankee minor leaguers are being quarantined in their hotel for two weeks and will be monitored and fed there.