Due to anxiety currently affecting the NBA amid the increase in COVID-19 cases, several players who previously tested positive for the coronavirus recently tested positive a second time, sources told ESPN.
The CDC defines ‘re-infection’ as a person who gets an infection, recovers and later becomes infected again. There are ongoing studies on how long immunity can last, but according to the CDC, coronavirus is expected to be reinfected.
The NBA has announced more than 100 positive tests since last summer, but the actual number since March is likely to be significantly higher. Several teams have more than ten players who have tested positive at some point in the past nine months, sources told ESPN.
As there have been fewer tests early in the pandemic and higher false positives, there is some uncertainty about how many players had true positive cases early in 2020, especially during the three-month league closure.
It is possible that some players who tested positive for the virus but were asymptomatic months ago were false positive. Some players have been tested at antibody levels to determine their level of immunity, but there is currently no legal procedure in place to test regularly for these levels.
Team and league doctors evaluate each positive test and player exposure per case because the nature of the virus is still uncertain, league officials said. Players who have tested positive over the past ninety days are sometimes treated differently than players who have tested positive over the past summer because of 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 delayed three games. The league has both put players who previously had the virus – Kevin Durant of Brooklyn and Bam Adebayo of Miami – both examples in health and safety quarantines after exposure to an infected person about concerns about re-infection or spread of the virus.
According to current CDC guidelines, the duration of immunity after a COVID-19 infection is not yet understood. Some reinfections, based on knowledge of other coronaviruses, are expected but presumably rare.
ESPN reporter Tim MacMahon contributed to this story.