San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Plan to resume season has one flaw — Florida
Even bubble can’t guarantee safety in coronavirus hot spot
The NBA and its players, in their effort to resume the season in the relative safety of an isolated campus, seem to have thought of everything. But everything might not be enough.
While experts offered praise for the protocols in place — spelled out in a 113page health and safety document that brought precautions as varied as testing schedules to barring doubles ping pong — the coronavirus pandemic still threatens the health of those the league is seeking to protect.
The dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases in Central Florida, where the NBA plans to resume play next month, could threaten the endeavor itself.
“I think they’re making a good-faith effort,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the nation’s leading experts on infectious diseases. “It’s just that the risk of doing this in an area where cases are climbing is a lot higher than it would be in a place where you don’t have much COVID transmission.
“Most likely, all it’s going to take is for a few players to start getting sick. Then it’s going to be lights out. People are going to give up. That’s the problem. They’re doing it in an area (where) the epidemic is raging.”
Hotez, a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, has no issues with the protocols.
He approves the extensive testing before teams and league employees leave for Florida and after they arrive at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex by July 9. The issue is with the situation outside the gates of the
Disney property.
“In principle, what they are proposing is doable,” Hotez said. “The problem is they are doing it in a part of the country where COVID is accelerating at an extraordinary rate. You have to really wonder about the advisability. The reality is they are doing it in an unsafe state. They picked one of the most dangerous spots in the country in terms of COVID-19.”
NBA players, coaches, staff members and other employees involved with the NBA on the Disney property are not permitted to leave the campus. If they do, are subject to enhanced testing and 10-14 days of quarantine when they return.
The Disney staff will commute to and from home each day, but won’t be subject to daily testing. Most workers will not be in the immediate proximity of players and others with the NBA, but having people coming in from communities that have become virus hot spots could lead to cases inside the bubble and threaten the season.
“The … concern is about staff that would come and go,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UT Health School of Public Health.
“It sounds like players are pretty well isolated,” she added. “But the staff is going home, and you don’t know what practices they’re doing or their household members are doing.”
Florida has set daily records for new cases almost every day for weeks. Orange County, where most of the Disney complex is located, had a positive test rate of 17.9 percent Thursday and has been in double digits for more than a week. Two weeks ago, the rate in Orange County was just 5 percent.
On Thursday, Florida had more than 114,000 cases — including 6,785 in Orange County — and 8,942 new cases in a single day, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The Disney staff will be subject to training on best practices away from the campus, but it’s impossible to eliminate the threat. And if a player contracts COVID-19, the contact inherent in basketball will make it difficult to contain.
“This virus is very contagious,” Lakey said. “And younger people can have minimal symptoms. There is significant potential that if one of the basketball players became infected, before they realized they were ill they could spread it to others.”
Still, players and staff members might be better off on the Disney campus, even in Central Florida, than they would be at home. Of the 22 teams involved in the restart, 14 are in states where cases are increasing, including eight in states with significant spikes.
“Yeah, I’d rather there not be an increase in cases in Florida, but I think they are putting in measures to mitigate it,” Parker said. “... Time will tell, I guess.”