A meeting of representatives of 12 professional baseball teams was held, and due to the rapid spread of the new coronavirus, it was decided to take new measures such as immediately testing for symptoms such as runny nose.
At the professional baseball and soccer J-League countermeasures liaison meeting held before the 12 team representatives' meeting, the frequency of inspections from infectious disease experts to players and team members due to the rapid spread of the new coronavirus. There were opinions calling for a review of the criteria for increasing the number of people and for the team to list people who are suspected of having close contact on their own.
For this reason, the representatives' meeting discussed new measures.
According to NPB = Nippon Professional Baseball, each baseball team calls on athletes and staff to report symptoms such as runny nose, and immediately conducts inspections to prevent infection.
In addition, regarding the criteria for listing people who are suspected of having close contact when an infected person appears, the behavior was investigated and listed up to 48 hours before the day when the symptom appeared or the day when the positive test was received. We have been doing this, but from now on, we will expand the scope to 72 hours ago.
In addition, the teams in the areas where the state of emergency has been declared have set a guideline for the frequency of inspections once a week from the end of May, and will continue to do so in the future.
Atsushi Ihara, Executive Secretary of NPB, said, "I would like to see experts discuss what to do and then deploy it to 12 teams."