NEWSLETTER
The first rapid antigen test has received emergency approval from the FDA – that’s the test that can give you a result in 15 minutes, and can be performed at any doctor’s office. They are not only faster, but they are also cheaper and much easier to mass produce. It’s pretty critical to the long-term containment of the virus and increasing return to “normal” activities. It was always coming, but we’ve been waiting. So this is a very good first step.
There’s a big HOWEVER: this first rapid antigen test has a very high rate of false negatives. When it gives you a “positive,” you can be pretty sure it’s correct. But there is upwards of a 15% false negative rate (i.e., only about 85% of the time you get a “negative” is it actually negative). In theory, that could improve over time – rapid antigen tests for the flu have a 5 to 10% false negative rate – but this is kinda part of the deal with rapid antigen tests.
In sum, having rapid antigen tests in wide use is going to be huge, but you will still have to have full lab tests fairly widely available, too.
What Happens If a Player Tests Positive? The First League Answer
Speaking of the wide availability of tests, after the NBA has given teams permission to use tests on asymptomatic players in locations where the supply is wide enough that plenty are available for those in need, the next question is when would the NBA – or another league – be able to get enough tests, ethically, to actually return to play.
It’s a tricky question, because safety is going to dictate tons and tons of regular testing (maybe even every day for every player and support personnel). And hopefully rapid antigen testing can scale up quickly to bridge that gap.
Because a league has finally answered one of the most widely-asked questions about the return of sports: what happens if/when a player tests positive?
Adam Silver:
Sources: On the ever-elusive question — What if a player tests positive upon return — Adam Silver told players the NBA would hope for daily testing at that point and no stoppage of play, having the player(s) isolated in quarantine.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 8, 2020
(Much more from Silver and the NBA here in Eli’s Bullets today.)
Basically, the theory is that, if you’re testing every player/personnel every day, then the moment someone tests positive, you send them home to quarantine. Since you’ve been testing everyone every day, that means there’s almost no chance that particular player/personnel could have spread the sickness widely, and instead, if multiple players/personnel tested positive within a period of time, it’s likely that they got it from the same source, rather than started spreading it around to each other. That’s the theory, anyway.
This is the planned approach in Asia, where baseball has returned, and it was definitely always the hoped-for plan in the States. It’s the only way to have a positive test not take down an entire team for multiple weeks. But you can’t actually do it until so many rapid tests are available. Thus, Silver’s answer pairs well with the news of the first rapid antigen test approval. Every league is going to want to proceed the same way.
Baseball At Home
To that end, Yankees President Randy Levine echoed the testing concern on the radio: “You take all the appropriate mitigation that you can to keep people safe. And you have to be prepared if somebody gets infected, which is all likelihood, somebody’s gonna get infected. What’s the protocol? How do you deal with it without just shutting down the season again?”
Testing, testing, testing.
Outside of that, Levine expressed optimism that there will be games in New York City this year, and speculated that teams could eventually permit 20% capacity at their parks, with distancing and hygiene measures in place. Recall, Levine is the one who said that an entire season without fans was “not practical”.
I tend to think games at home parks are likely to be the core of the proposal that owners submit to the players this coming week, but I remain very skeptical that fan attendance is going to happen this year (or that it is worth the risk when the time comes). But, I admit: I don’t know anything. We don’t know what the world will look like in three+ months, so we’ll see.
College Sports Up in the Air
If you ask 10 different stakeholders in college sports, it seems you’re going to get 10 different answers on what is going to happen this fall.
For example, three prominent voices with three entirely different perspectives:
NCAA president Mark Emmert says he cannot see sports re-starting at schools that operating only with online classes. He and NCAA's top medical officer says testing, tracing must dramatically improve: https://t.co/gCPqpO2OIB
— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) May 9, 2020
“We could have, in our country, a disjointed way of doing things. Certain regions might be playing and other regions aren’t.” https://t.co/7ANo6UnspY
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) May 8, 2020
According to conference commissioners, online-only courses won't stop college football. @Brett_McMurphy has the details ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/GDYjE4ybOr
— Stadium (@Stadium) May 7, 2020
The problem we’re going to run into is what we’ve seen already in general: different regions of the country will have different levels of the virus and levels of safety, and will also have entirely different political sentiment (which, unfortunately, is guiding this process as much as anything else). So how in the world do you get a comprehensive plan in place when you’ve got 300+ different institutions involved, with students to think about, in 50 different states, etc., etc.?
I think we just have to continue to wait to see how the next month or two goes on the virus/testing/treatment front. I am probably more sympathetic to the desire to host college football and basketball than many others; I actually am not huge into those sports myself, but the revenues they generate for schools is critical to the non-revenue sports (like baseball), and also to the entire operation of the school in some cases.
