The NBA’s access to coronavirus testing helped the league protect players. The rest of us deserve the same.

The NBA has access to quick, reliable COVID-19 testing. It’s time for the public to demand the same thing.

Late Wednesday night, the NBA postponed the season indefinitely after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, otherwise called COVID-19.

In a dramatic moment on ESPN, medical personnel raced onto the court and shut the game between the Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder down minutes before tip-off because of Gobert’s test results. Earlier in the day, Gobert was ruled questionable for the game because he wasn’t feeling well. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Gobert was given the test by team officials and the Jazz and Thunder were later quarantined. Per ESPN’s Royce Young, Gobert did not have any contact with Thunder players while he was waiting for test results, and was not at the OKC facility, though he did travel with the team.

In a totally unprecedented scenario such as this, there are a lot of questions as to what procedures and protocols the team followed and what they missed. One of the big questions that remains is how the team was able to get access to COVID-19 tests so quickly when so many hospitals, clinics and health agencies haven’t been able to get tests to help people in their own communities.

In a statement, the Jazz said Gobert tested negative for influenza and the decision was then made to test him for COVID-19 in conjunction with NBA medical staff and Oklahoma health officials. Further tests were done in conjunction with the Oklahoma health officials, and a total of 58 tests were administered.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s positive COVID-19 test, Oklahoma health officials tested all members of the Utah Jazz traveling party, confirming one additional positive outcome for a Jazz player. We are working closely with the CDC, Oklahoma and Utah state officials, and the NBA to monitor their health and determine the best path moving forward.

While the team did not name the one additional positive player, ESPN reports it was Donovan Mitchell.

Even if there were missteps along the way, the Jazz, the NBA and Oklahoma officials all made the right call in testing Gobert and shutting down the league as quickly as possible. While other cases of COVID-19 might emerge inside the NBA, at least the teams acted quickly and aggressively in the face of a positive test. Because of the Jazz’s decision to test, and ability to get quick access to a test, not only has the league been spared wider consequences, but the NBA has become a bell cow for other leagues to follow.

So far, multiple sports leagues and conferences, including the XFL, MLS and BigTen and SEC, have announced that they are canceling tournaments and games due the possibility of spreading the virus. That’s the absolute right call. While governments have been dragging their feet on issuing bans on large gatherings, leagues have had to take matters into their own hands and put public health before profit. Gobert’s positive test is helping push them in the right direction. All it took was one positive test result to set off a chain reaction that could potentially save a lot of lives.

This all shows why access to quick, reliable, affordable testing is an absolute must not just for high-profile players but for the general public. Health officials have been stressing for weeks now that one of the keys to controlling the spread of the virus is quarantining people who only show mild symptoms, like Gobert. Diagnosing one person before he can potentially infect others is the best way to help stem the spread of the disease.

“Without testing, you have no idea how extensive the infection is. You can’t isolate people. You can’t do anything,” Ashish Jha, who runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR. “And so then we’re left with a completely different set of choices. We have to shut schools, events and everything down, because that’s the only tool available to us until we get testing back up. It’s been stunning to me how bad the federal response has been.”

So far, the US lags behind just about every other developed country in COVID-19 testing. Per Yahoo news, the CDC tested 77 people as of Wednesday and states are only testing an average of 50 people a day.

This partial list shows the testing capacity for labs across the country.

Right now,  the US can test about 18K cases a day across the entire country. How, then, did the NBA get access to such rapid results for 58 tests within 12 hours?

According to NPR, the US has started testing more widely but figures still aren’t available at a national level.  For The Win reached out the Utah Jazz for comment about how the team received access to testing but have not heard back.

One simple COVID-19 test has been crucial to the NBA in avoiding a potential larger disaster. The league’s example has trickled down and helped show other leagues how devastating the spread of COVID-19 could be. The NBA was able to get Gobert access to a test that has potentially saved lives. It’s time for the general public to start demanding they get treated with the same priority.

[lawrence-related id=901608,901564,901563,901496]