By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
A police chief in the USA asked government officials to “stop testing NBA players, and start testing our first responders.”
John Carli, the Chief of Police at Vacaville (a city in northern California) Police Department made the plea during a conference call with White House and Homeland Security, per ABC.
“I’m having to go to the medical staff and say ‘get my first responders tested’ because if we quarantine people for 14 days and everyone has a different opinion on how long you can be symptomatic and then symptoms-free, we’re going to lose our first responders. And we have to, at a national level, get the support down to the local level,” Carli said.
“Stop testing NBA players, and start testing our first responders. Somebody needs to make a decision on a very high level because you know people in your local hospital,” Carli concluded.
Since the first coronavirus case appeared in the NBA when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was found positive for COVID-19 on March 11, eight teams were tested. Gobert’s teammate Donovan Mitchell, Marcus Smart, and Kevin Durant have been among the players struck by the virus.
The easy accessibility of NBA teams to coronavirus tests and players getting tested while being asymptomatic has been a subject of debate and criticism, considering the fact that there has been a shortage of available test kits for the vast majority of people, even those who had shown symptoms.
Coronavirus cases in the USA have jumped over 31,000, according to the latest update.