---
title: "Sutter Doctor Helped Lead the NFL's COVID Safety Plan | Sutter Health"
description: "Dr. Navdeep Singh, former Sutter Eden Medical Center chief, joined the NFL's Health and Safety Committee, guiding daily COVID testing to save the season."
url: "https://vitals.sutterhealth.org/research-innovation/touchdown-eden-doctor-helps-lead-nfl-covid-program"
---

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# Touchdown! Doctor Helps Lead NFL COVID Program

Dr. Navdeep Singh, former Sutter Eden Medical Center chief, joined the NFL's Health and Safety Committee, guiding daily COVID testing to save the season.

July 23, 2021 by Monique Binkley Smith

Fans of professional football owe [Navdeep Singh, M.D.](https://www.sutterhealth.org/eden/find-doctor/dr-navdeep-singh), former chief medical executive for [Sutter’s Eden Medical Center](https://www.sutterhealth.org/eden) and a team doctor for the Raiders for 10 years, a debt of gratitude for helping keep their favorite teams playing throughout the 2020 season—despite the pandemic.

Dr. Singh joined the [National Football League’s](https://www.nfl.com/) Health and Safety Committee last August. As a member of the committee, he supported the NFL’s COVID-19 testing and monitoring program that led the NFL to a successful 2020 season without any games canceled.

> “The daily habit of masking and avoidance of unnecessary indoor interaction, in particular in-person meetings and eating meals together, were key. These measures, in conjunction with daily COVID testing followed by immediate isolation of confirmed cases and quarantine of close contacts in a highly organized, collaborative environment…was the foundation for containing the virus,” says Dr. Singh.

Dr. Singh also helped author an [article](https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-0319) for the _Annals of Internal Medicine_ about the large-scale daily testing program that monitored players and staff of 32 NFL teams in 24 states and focused on early detection, prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

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