Six players and four non-playing members of staff have tested positive after the first round of Premiership Rugby's coronavirus testing.

A total of 804 tests were carried out across the 12 clubs on Monday.

Saracens confirmed "one or more" staff members tested positive, but no players, and Harlequins said a "member of the club" was also among them.

The season was suspended in March and Premiership Rugby hopes to resume the league on the weekend of 15 August.

"We have to respect patient confidentiality so we won't be naming the person or people involved," Saracens said in a statement.

"The individuals will now go into isolation along with any others identified as close contacts in both their team and household settings. This is informed by protocols established with Public Health England (PHE) and Track and Trace."

Premiership teams were told at the start of June that they could begin socially-distanced non-contact training in small groups, and were able to progress to close-contact training from Monday onwards.

Leicester Tigers and England scrum-half Ben Youngs told the BBC: "I'd probably be naive to think that out of 800 tests you aren't going to get a few [positives].

"But I think what's important are the protocols of what happens next. You don't want that 10 to be 30 next week, then 80, and then we are in a spot of bother.

"But rugby does need to get back up and running. The clubs need it, everyone needs it, so we need that to be as diligent as possible across all the clubs to allow that.

"Hopefully people follow the protocols to make sure next week it isn't any larger than that."

Whoever it is, I hope they have a speedy recovery. (And indeed everyone who has caught it).

Could potentially wreak havoc in a squad though in terms of self-isolation required - if one player catches it, how many other players have they likely come into contact with that then have to quarantine? And as return to training moves through the phases, the Prem squads will be training all together again. If one player catches it at that point, you're looking at cancelled games.

That's without even mentioning the various stages of preparation different player groups will be at depending on whether or not they have had to quarantine for 2 weeks at any given time. Bit of a mare really.

According to the report in the Grauniad, these tests *were* done before the move to phase 2 of returning to training

Was always going to happen to someone.  Football managed it very well.  I could be wrong but I think because the testing is regular, the need for people to isolate if they come into contact is not like it would be for "normal" people

So, in theory, if a forward tests positive for COVID-19 and we are close contact training then we could lose our pack for a fortnight. Not a problem now, but as we approach the 10 August league re-start day I wonder what would happen? Would this then mean that the 10 August start date would be deferred? Or would we have to concede games?

Yes, that would be a problem. I guess the aim is to avoid it - the testing regime ought to filter out anyone who's positive, and once the players move into the "bubble" of contact training they should be being very careful to manage their own contact outside of the ground.

If a team did have to isolate a large chunk of the squad, I imagine that the league would have some sort of provision for it. Not sure if there's schedule for it to be replayed, so they might have to concede.

The difference here between rugby & football is that positions are so specialist in rugby, especially the most at risk positions, the front row.  If someone in your front row gets it, the chances of it spreading via scrum practice to take out 2 full front rows must be significant.   

So, while you might only be down a small proportion of your full squad, you can be very much weakened.  You'd expect that they've thought through what they'll do if this happens.

Apparently not - I've posted on a separate thread that the research has been done and found that the risk of transmission is actually pretty low in the scrum itself. It's the hanging around for restarts and the yappy little scrum halves that spread disease...

Exactly! The false positive rate is quite high so the probability is that none of the 10 actually have it!