NFL: Team facilities to be closed in response to COVID-19 surge

(Reuters) - The NFL decided to prohibit in-person team activities on Monday and Tuesday given rising COVID-19 cases around the country and because a number of players celebrated U.S. Thanksgiving with out-of-town guests.

The new measures were announced in a league-wide memo posted on the NFL's website late on Friday, a day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, and do not apply to the four teams scheduled to play on Monday or Tuesday.

"In response to the continuous increase in positivity rates throughout the country, as well as our understanding that a number of players and staff celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday with out-of-town guests, all in-person team activities on Monday, November 30 and Tuesday, December 1, will be prohibited," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in the memo.

Teams typically hold walkthroughs as opposed to full-on practices early in the week but Goodell said activities must be conducted virtually with the exception of essential medical treatment.

Earlier this week the Baltimore Ravens' Thanksgiving Day game was rescheduled twice because of a COVID-19 outbreak within the visiting team.

(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto, editing by Ed Osmond)