Thousands of MLB players and employees are participating in a coronavirus antibody study

• MLB players, their family members, and staff of the league are taking part in a nationwide COVID-19 antibody study looking into how widespread the novel coronavirus is in the US.
• The study, which is being run by Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL), will feature up to 10,000 volunteers across 27 teams.
• The study, first reported by ESPN and The Athletic, is the largest nationwide study of coronavirus antibodies.
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Thousands of Major League Baseball players and employees are taking part in a COVID-19 antibody study looking into how widespread the novel coronavirus is across the United States.

The study, which was first reported by ESPN and The Athletic, is being run by Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL).

It will feature up to 10,000 volunteers from 27 teams across the MLB, and individuals taking part include players, stadium employees, and relatives of athletes. Its goal is to understand which regions of the US have been hit hardest by COVID-19, and how extensive the spread has been.

Subjects involved will have their fingers pricked for a blood test, and results will be available in 10 minutes. All results will be anonymous.

A researcher behind the study, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is a professor of medicine at Stanford, told ESPN that it's the first and largest nationwide study of coronavirus antibodies.

"This is the first study of national scope where we're going to get a read on a large number of communities throughout the United States to understand how extensive the spread of the virus has been," he said.

Daniel Eichner, president of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based SMRTL, told USA Today that the MLB moved "as quickly as they could" to join the study and were "happy to contribute."

"I think it will be enormously useful for public health to understand how extensive the infection is around the country. We need a study like this," he said.