It was announced Tuesday morning that the fourth round of mass PCR testing for COVID-19 at the Vuelta a España for athletes and team staff were all negative.

In a joint press release issued Tuesday morning by the UCI and race organizer Unipublic, it was announced that 681 tests were performed, 528 of which were on athletes and team staff and the remaining 153 on "Level 2" members of the race organization bubble (the organization most closely associated with athletes and teams members) were identified.

All of the latest tests were negative, so there have been no positive tests since before the start of the race. Cofidis' Jesús Herrada was forced to miss the Vuelta after testing positive the week before the race, while the staff of Team Sunweb and Bahrain McLaren left the race after testing positive in the final pre-race check.

A large amount of testing was done by all those taking part in the race, including the media, prior to their arrival at the event, just before the race, and on the first rest day.

Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic in Western Europe, with 1.1 million registered cases to date, declared a six-month state of emergency more than a week ago;

the country has been under a state of emergency for more than a year.

On Saturday, as part of a statement regarding protests over the time-split rule for stage 10, the riders insisted that the organizers were not to blame and said, "There is unanimity within the peloton that La Vuelta 2020 is one of the safest and most well organized races during a pandemic outbreak. I applaud the measures that have been implemented to make the race as safe as possible."

The Vuelta 2020 has been a "very successful race,"

and the Vuelta 2020 has been a "very successful race.

The Vuelta a España continues with an individual time trial to Mirador de Ezaro on Tuesday and finishes in Madrid on Sunday. The women's World Tour event, the Madrid Challenge by La Vuelta, will begin on Friday with three stages from Toledo to Madrid.