The Marlins' COVID-19 outbreak is already 'off the charts' worse than one epidemiologist would have expected

• The Miami Marlins have 14 cases of the novel coronavirus on their team, marking the first outbreak in American sports.
• Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, told Insider he is stunned at how quickly the virus made its way through the Marlins' clubhouse.
• Binney recommended a 14-day quarantine for the Marlins and more canceled games to see the extent of the spread.
• MLB is not playing in a bubble, which Binney called a "real-time" experiment to see how the virus will spread through games and teams.

The Miami Marlins have 14 cases of the novel coronavirus on their team, making them the first American sports team to experience an outbreak.

The outbreak has already resulted in the cancellation of Monday's Marlins-Baltimore Orioles game and the Philadelphia Phillies-New York Yankees game, as the Marlins played in Philadelphia. The Marlins are quarantining in place and undergoing more tests.

The Marlins' decision to play on Sunday, even after having four known cases of COVID-19 on the team, has now put the MLB season in jeopardy.

According to Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University, the severity of the Marlins outbreak and how quickly it moved through the team has been surprising.

"I am stunned by just how quickly the virus appears to have ripped through the Marlins clubhouse," Binney told Insider. "This is off the charts in terms of my expectations for how bad it is."

Binney said that baseball is not a particularly high-risk activity because it is, for the most part, a naturally distanced game. Binney said his concern would be what led to the outbreak.

"I think we need a really thorough epidemiological investigation of what happened on the Marlins. So, we need to understand how this broke down. Was there some risky behavior from players who, say, went out to a bar or nightclub? Is that where this started, or was the spread mostly occurring at the Marlins facility, in the dugout or in the clubhouse? And if so, where did MLB's protocols either break down or where were they too weak to begin with, and how can we improve the situation?"

According to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark, Marlins players discussed the positive cases on the team before the start of Sunday's game. Shortstop Miguel Rojas later told reporters that not playing was "never our mentality."

Binney said he would recommend a two-week quarantine for the Marlins to see if more cases arise, and a five-day "probationary quarantine" for the Phillies to see if the virus spread to them. If it did, he would then extend the quarantine.

The Marlins outbreak has furthered concerns about sports leagues playing outside of a "bubble" like the NBA, WNBA, MLS, and NWSL are doing. The bubble plans, in which players quarantine and live in a controlled environment, are not perfect, but so far, all of the leagues have contained breakouts and had rounds of testing with 0 positive cases.

MLB, meanwhile, is not playing in a bubble, with regular travel in and out of cities. Binney compared the plan to Bundesliga, Germany's top soccer league, noting that Germany and the U.S. are in very different places in fighting the coronavirus. According to The New York Times, on July 26, Germany recorded 340 new cases. On Friday, July 24, the U.S. had over 73,000 new cases, according to the Times.

"We are not Germany. We are the U.S., and we are doing a much, much worse job with containing the virus than they are," Binney said. "So what that means is there's a greater chance of a case occurring and then consequently spreading through a team or through Major League Baseball."

Binney said MLB's plan is basically a "real-time" experiment to see how the virus transmits during games and how leagues may function outside of a bubble.

"Was [the Marlins outbreak] simply a fact of the protocols were as good as they could be, but when there's just so much virus around you, as there is in Miami, can you hold a sports league outside of a bubble? Or is a bubble really your only choice to do it safely?"

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