In addition to the fear currently affecting the NBA amid a spike in COVID-19 cases, multiple players who previously tested positive for the coronavirus recently tested positive a second time, sources told ESPN.
The CDC defines “reinfection” as a person who contracts, recovers, and later becomes infected again. There are ongoing studies on how long the immunity could last, but the CDC says it expects some coronavirus re-infections.
The NBA has announced more than 100 positive tests since last summer, but the actual number since March is believed to be significantly higher. Different teams have more than 10 players who have tested positive at one point in the past nine months, sources told ESPN.
Because tests were less available and there were more false positives early in the pandemic, there is some uncertainty about how many players had true positive cases in early 2020, especially during the three-month close of the competition.
It’s possible that some players who tested positive for the virus but were asymptomatic months ago were false positives. Some players have been tested for antibody levels to determine their immunity level, but there is currently no league-wide procedure to test regularly for those levels.
Team and league doctors evaluate each positive test and player exposure on a case-by-case basis, as the nature of the virus is still uncertain, league officials said. For example, players who tested positive in the past 90 days are sometimes treated differently from players who tested positive last summer due to the way the virus can still appear in their system.
The league office, the National Basketball Players Association, teams and agents have been in talks in recent days to consider protocol changes to limit the spread that has caused three games to be postponed. The league has already placed players who previously had the virus – Brooklyn’s Kevin Durant and Miami’s Bam Adebayo are two examples – in weeks of health and safety quarantines after exposure to an infected person due to concerns about reinfection or spread of the virus.
According to current CDC guidelines, the duration of immunity after a COVID-19 infection is not yet known. Some reinfections, based on knowledge of other coronaviruses, are expected but believed to be rare.
ESPN reporter Tim MacMahon contributed to this story.