Covid-19 outbreak among New York Yankees players

The Yankees’ first game after the All-Star Game against the Boston Red Sox on Thursday night was postponed due to positive COVID-19 tests among vaccinated New York pitchers Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes Jr. and Wandy Peralta.

“It is a fluid situation that could be extended. It has spread to a certain extent,” said the Yankees general manager, Brian Cashman.

New York Yankees before the outbreak

Jonathan Loaisiga, was put on the IL list for Covid-19 by the Yankees. AP Photo

“We have three positives and we have three pending in which we have had rapid tests. We will now wait for the laboratory tests to return, which I assume will also be positive.

So that would increase our number to six, but we are not yet six. We are at three confirmed «.

New York Yankees in Houston

Wandy Peralta (left) and Nestor Cortés were also infected with Covid-19. AP photos

Loaisiga entered the COVID-19 disabled list on Saturday, when the Yankees were in Houston, and did not travel home with the team on Sunday. Cortés and Peralta rose on Thursday for COVID-19 IL.

Cashman said all three were fully vaccinated, as were most of the team’s players. Among the three, two received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the other was Pfizer or Moderna, according to Cashman.

Judge, Chapman and Cole, waiting for their results

Aaron Judge is among the players who could test positive for Covid-19. AP Photo «Those players are doing well so far,» he said. «And that would go back to the belief that these vaccines are working and, ultimately, are to protect us from serious illness and / or death.» The three players waiting for the lab’s results are in quarantine. Cashman did not say if they include the Yankees All-Stars who were in Denver: Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole and Aroldis Chapman.

MLB was conducting contact tracing according to its protocols. «The vaccines that we encourage everyone to get ensures that they will not be hospitalized and will not suffer death from COVID, which is important, but it does not prevent them from contracting COVID,» Cashman said. «Obviously, it protects you from the serious effects of COVID in the worst case.»

Cashman responds to the situation

Photo: Shutterstock
NEW YORK – NOV 11_ Brian Cashman (Left) and Joe Torre (Right)

Cashman said Major League Baseball has not yet decided whether to postpone the second game scheduled for Friday of the four-game series. «The past year, year and a half, it kind of prepared you for this kind of thing,» Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. «Certainly disappointing and frustrating.»

This was the eighth COVID-related postponement this season, but the first in nearly three months. Also postponed was a three-game series that featured the Mets New York in Washington April 1-4, and Atlanta’s game against the Nationals on April 5. Plus two Minnesota games at the Los Angeles Angels April 17-18 and a Twins at Oakland. game on April 19. There were 45 regular-season games postponed for virus-related reasons during last year’s pandemic shortened season, but only two failed to make up, between St. Louis and Detroit.