Washington Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo announces employee of organization tested positive for COVID-19

In the first two of three conference calls he’s held with reporters during the ongoing COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic, Washington Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo was pleased to announce that no one in the organization had tested positive for the virus, but in this afternoon’s call, the General Manager shared the news that an employee of the club did test positive.

“Unfortunately this week, we’ve had one positive test from a Nationals’ employee for COVID-19,” Rizzo explained.

“The person tested positive well after we shut down the facilities in West Palm Beach and D.C. which was good, and fortunately he’s resting at home and doing well.

“HIs quarantine has ended, and he’s been fever-free and symptom-free since then, so the doctors think that he’s in a good position.”

So far, thankfully, this employee is the only one in the organization to have the virus, and Rizzo reiterated that no players have shown symptoms or been tested for the virus.

“No players have had any type of symptoms in our daily communications with them, and so none have been tested,” he said.

“We feel really good about where we’re at and how we’ve handled the virus and we feel that we’ve got a good handle on all of our players, staff, and everything else, as far as moving forward and also isolating and staying — and distancing from people, and we feel that we’ve done a good job of that and we’ve seen the results have been very positive.”

While he wasn’t going to give out any personal information on the person who did have to deal with the virus, Rizzo reiterated that the person had been working in West Palm Beach, FL, at the club’s Spring Training facilities, but only showed symptoms after everyone left the facilities, which are now being used as a testing site for local residents.

“Suffice it to say, the person was in West Palm Beach,” Rizzo told reporters. “It was a non-player, and we’re going to keep it at that.

“The person has been taken care of, gone through all the protocols and procedures, he’s been quarantined, he’s through quarantine, and he’s on the road to getting better.”

Asked if the first positive test within the organization changed anything about how the team is handling things, Rizzo said they have been careful and diligent dealing with this from the start, so that it wasn’t necessary to change things up.

“We’ve been checking in on a daily basis with every player and staff member, according to the MLB protocols, our medical people have been very, very diligent in doing so,” he added.

“We alerted on our Teamworks site about the employee and followed all the protocols that we had to follow to ensure the safety of everybody involved.”