Pro sports leagues are jumping the line to get COVID-19 tests back within hours.
On July 2, Dr. Adrian Burrowes, a family medicine physician in central Florida, saw a patient who feared he might have contracted COVID-19. So he had the patient tested and submitted the test to a lab.That same day, less than half an hour away in Orlando, about 180 players and staff members from four Major League Soccer teams had a similar test performed upon checking into their hotel. Their results came back within hours.
The surge in testing — less than a month ago, the state was testing fewer than 19,000 people a day — has overwhelmed laboratories. The typical turnaround time in Florida and throughout the nation has grown, in many cases, from a day or two to more than a week.
The MLS has about 1,300 players and staff quarantined in a Disney resort, where they are being tested every other day. The NBA has been doing several hundred daily tests on players and staff for 22 of its teams, quarantined in another Orlando resort. The number of tests isn’t as big a problem as how swiftly the tests are processed, though, with the leagues pushing ahead of people who, in some cases, have been waiting weeks to find out if they have COVID-19.“The optics are horrible,” Binney said.
Not only will those additional tests tax an already burdened laboratory system, but the leagues will all be cutting deals to have their tests expedited, pushing past hospitals, schools and drive-through testing sites.“I’m a huge sports fan. So I love that they’re trying to bring sports back,” Burrowes said. “But at the same time, I have to wonder if it makes sense right now. This is corresponding to a spike. If this did not correlate to a spike in our COVID positivity rates, it’d be different.
“Every single one of our clients that are sending us more tests in Florida are getting their results back with absolutely no bump in the road,” he said. “We deliver on our results.”He said the lab prioritizes use of its testing capacity for hospitals, ICU patients, healthcare workers and front-line responders, in addition to athletes. The best way to look at the NBA, he said, is as another client that procured his services.
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