⁍ Players with cold and flu symptoms will miss practice and games even if they test negative for COVID-19.

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⁍ Atlanta Falcons shut down their practice facility after a new positive test for COVID-19.

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⁍ Cleveland Browns sent three-times Pro Bowl wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. home from practice with an illness.

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– The Atlanta Falcons have closed their practice facility and the Cleveland Browns sent wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. home from practice with an illness, the AP reports. Meanwhile, the NFL’s chief medical officer said Thursday that players with cold- and flu-like symptoms will miss practice and games even if they test negative for a virus that has surfaced recently. “There are many illnesses other than COVID that can cause those symptoms but because there is so much overlap we always have to assume it could be COVID,” Allen Sills told a conference call, per Reuters. “And even if that individual has tested negative that same day we are going to send him home until we have a chance to run through all of those other tests.” Sills said decisions on sending a player home will be made by the team’s medical staff and in consultation with the NFL’s infectious diseases experts and the league as a whole. “Our goal is to make sure we don’t put someone on the field that we think might actively be infected,” he said. “If it turns out those were non-COVID symptoms then certainly we would all be happy with that outcome.”