“Even professional athletes who test negative for COVID-19 with regular testing could be false positives and could get sick,” said Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. The risk is amplified by the nature of athletic competition. There is no room for social distancing amid constant physical contact in football and basketball. Baseball has its tradition of players spitting and managers arguing, nose-to-nose, with umpires. “It’s not just the games,” Chang said. “Every practice is a high-risk transmission event.”