Major League Baseball players and employees are participating in a major study that will test up to 10,000 people for COVID-19 antibodies.

The study, which is being run by Stanford University, USC and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory (SMRTL), will use test kits that draw blood via pinprick and offer results within 10 minutes. The test will detect the prevalence of IgM, an antibody produced relatively early in those who have been infected with COVID-19, and IgG, a second form that doctors said lasts long after the infection happens. A positive test would confirm a person did in fact contract coronavirus, even if he or she was asymptomatic.

"This is the first study of national scope where we're going to get a read on a large number of communities throughout the United States to understand how extensive the spread of the virus has been," said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who will assess the data gathered this week and write a peer-reviewed paper he hopes to publish as early as next week. "This will be the very first of those. Why MLB versus other employers? I've reached out to others, but MLB moved by far the fastest. They've been enormously cooperative and flexible. We're trying to set up a scientific study that would normally take years to set up, and it's going to be a matter of weeks."

Because the data in the MLB study will be de-identified and not all players are expected to participate, Eichner said, it would not serve as a proxy for baseball's ability to return to play.

"MLB did not partner with us for any selfish reason to get their sport back sooner," Dr. Daniel Eichner, the president of SMRTL said. "They jumped in for public health policy. That was their intention and their only intention."