The NFL has updat­ed its game­day pro­to­cols by requir­ing every coach and staff mem­ber in the bench area to wear a mask and reduc­ing the size of each team’s trav­el party.

Own­ers also will have to fol­low COVID-19 test­ing require­ments to gain access to the lock­er room, field or team charter.

NFL Com­mis­sion­er Roger Good­ell said the league, the NFL Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and med­ical experts have “devel­oped a com­pre­hen­sive set of pro­to­cols that put us in the best pos­si­ble posi­tion to com­plete the sea­son, cul­mi­nat­ing with the Super Bowl in Tam­pa Bay.”

There were four new con­firmed pos­i­tive tests among play­ers and six new con­firmed pos­i­tives among oth­er per­son­nel from 58,621 tests admin­is­tered to a total of 8,739 play­ers and team per­son­nel between August 21–29.

“We have been real­ly for­tu­nate that cas­es of COVID-19 are very low across the league,” Good­ell said Tues­day. “It is a tes­ta­ment to the plans, but most impor­tant­ly to the dili­gence of the play­ers, the teams and their staffs. I would tell you that we still have more work to do. We are not going to get com­fort­able. We will remain vig­i­lant, resilient, flex­i­ble and basi­cal­ly adapt to cir­cum­stances as need­ed with pub­lic health as our No. 1 pri­or­i­ty as we have all this offseason.”

Dr. Allen Sills, the league’s chief med­ical offi­cer, says the league is mon­i­tor­ing new devel­op­ments in test­ing tech­nol­o­gy and con­tin­ues to adapt to new information.

“We have a relent­less oppo­nent here, which is this virus, and we know that there can be new cas­es that occur no mat­ter how dili­gent we are with all of our pro­to­cols and our per­son­nel,” Sills said. “So we just have to remain very vig­i­lant and real­ize that we’re still very ear­ly on, but we’re encour­aged by what we’ve seen so far.”

The league is work­ing with pub­lic health offi­cials to deter­mine whether fans will be allowed into sta­di­ums. A few teams will be allowed to begin the sea­son with lim­it­ed fans in the stands.

“I believe that we may be hav­ing a lot of teams that will start with no fans in the begin­ning this sea­son, and then evolve to fans,” Good­ell said.

Some coach­es have voiced dis­plea­sure with the incon­sis­tent policy.

Bills coach Sean McDer­mott called it “ridicu­lous” and Vikings coach Mike Zim­mer said it’s “unfair” that some teams will have fans and oth­ers won’t.

“We do not believe it’s a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage,” Good­ell said. “We dis­cussed it very ear­ly on with our com­pe­ti­tion com­mit­tee and with our clubs. We do not see that. We obvi­ous­ly have vary­ing capac­i­ty across the league. And from our stand­point, we want to invite our fans in if we can do it safe­ly and we can do it with the full sup­port of local officials.”

NFL exec­u­tive Troy Vin­cent said the league’s com­pe­ti­tion com­mit­tee is still final­iz­ing details on deci­bel lev­els for arti­fi­cial crowd noise that will be piped into stadiums.