Testing ‘won’t be an obstacle’
Private company says it can test all student-athletes in state free of charge
California’s demand that student-athletes in some sports be tested for COVID-19 in order to play during the pandemic can either be considered a safe and revolutionary path back to the playing field or another burdensome step that could prevent kids from playing this spring.
Bay Area basketball coaches were increasingly optimistic on a Monday evening videoconference about the prospect of a successful surveillance testing campaign — the first in the nation for high school athletes — with the help of a private provider that has said it has the ability to conduct tests for all athletes in California free of charge.
“I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to continue the momentum but this past week was even bigger,” said Randy Bessolo, the boys’ basketball coach at University High in San Francisco and a founder of the Bay Area Basketball Coach Alliance. “We have a pathway to play immediately if we test.”
Under California’s new guidelines for youth sports, all athletic activities that don’t meet the state’s return-to-play standards can be played as long as teams implement testing protocols that mirror those used by collegiate teams. However, the state has only agreed to provide free testing through its own laboratory for athletes in high-contact outdoor sports above a certain case threshold.
That’s where Let Them Play CA and Inspire Health Alliance comes in.
Inspire Health Alliance said it will be able to test every student-athlete in California free of charge through a partnership
with the return-to-play advocates. Its 11:11 COVID Project has provided testing for large corporations such as WalMart and Disney, Let Them Play CA cofounder Brad Hensley said.
John Kang, a representative for Inspire Health, said “that pivot from being able to take care of a lot of companies to now be able to use that for students for us has been a great pleasure. …
“It’s been an incredible challenge that all of us have gone through over the last year,” Kang said in a recent Facebook Live video. “To be able … to get back to a little bit of a sense of normalcy by getting kids back out on the field, for us, it’s something we look forward to — being able to do our part in helping our communities get back to normal.”
Once schools register for the service, Kang said, the company is able to send nurses and set up a testing site on any campus in any major metropolitan area of the state. In rural areas, Kang said, the company can either bring a mobile testing site that travels between different schools within a district or coordinate overnight shipping to its permanent lab in Southern California.
Although testing is provided free of charge, the effort is “not complete benevolent,” Bessolo said.
By leveraging federal funding from the CARES Act in addition to private insurance provider, the testing will be provided at no cost to students, parents or coaches. Those funds also ensure the company makes money.
“They’re a motivated company that is going to test statewide at no cost to the people getting the test,” Bessolo said.
Added Kang: “We basically take care of everything.”
Two days prior to a contest, Inspire Health’s nurses will visit a school and collect specimens using an anterior nasal swab, likely during lunch or a break in practice, Kang said. Those samples will be run in its lab and, within 24 hours, those results will be available to the student-athletes for competition. California’s guidelines require a negative test result within 48 hours of competition to be eligible to play.
Mandated testing regimens in college conferences and professional leagues were commonplace in 2020, but California will be the first state to require its prep athletes meet the same requirements. The new agreement is the product of a lawsuit in San Diego County that claimed youth athletes did not receive equal treatment as their collegiate and professional counterparts.
Last week, the company began testing student-athletes in San Diego County following the court ruling that led to the possibility of indoor play. Now, it is faced with the prospect of expanding statewide.
“Our hope working with Let Them Play is that anywhere in the state, kids will have access to testing,” Kang said.
Tim Sbranti, the athletic director at Dublin High, said it was already an improvement over the school’s previous testing provider.