LaMelo Ball and three others ended up in health protocol. The Hornets have closed their training facility and are awaiting further testing
This is the first scare of the season, the first real risk of a Covid epidemic in an NBA team. Charlotte found she had 4 positive players in all: LaMelo Ball, Terry Rozier, Mason Plumlee and Jalen McDaniels. And the alarm went off, the first of 2021-22.
The procedure
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The positive swabs of the 4 Hornets players arrived on the American morning on Saturday. Ball and the others were immediately placed in solitary confinement: they will remain there for 10 days, or until they can do two negative swabs 24 hours apart. The real alarm went off for everyone else: the players were training and were immediately sent home waiting to be subjected to new tampons, as were the coaches and all the staff. The plant was closed pending reclamation. Charlotte operates as a fully vaccinated team: this means that all players, including the 4 completed in health protocol, have undergone two doses of the vaccine. And so the coaches, the technical staff and all the staff in daily contact with the athletes, from the warehouse workers to the press officers.
the next steps
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The Hornets returned to Charlotte in the early hours of Thursday after losing their third straight game in Milwaukee on Wednesday in a season in which Borrego’s side are among the stars of the Eastern Conference. Tomorrow they will play the last of the 4 games live in Atlanta, but given the 4 days of rest the team had returned to Queen City. The game with the Hawks for now is not at risk: to play it, the Hornets need at least 8 healthy players to be able to send on the field. But the four positives at the same time raised the alarm: only Philadelphia this season had had 4 players all together in the protocol (Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, Matisse Thybulle and Isaiah Joe), but they had entered at different times, without triggering . the epidemic alarm sounds in Charlotte instead.
protocol and vaccines
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The NBA has strictly followed its “hygiene and safety protocol” since the shooting of the Orlando bubble. But he changed it at the beginning of 2021-22, differentiating between vaccinated players (96% of the total) and not. Vaccinated people are not tested daily like unvaccinated people (who have to swab daily and two on match days) and have no restrictions other than pandemic prevention common sense for what they can do both at home and outside, where the unvaccinated are still neighbors at the hotel, as in 2020-21, except to go to train and play. The protocol is about to change again: the NBA and the footballers association have launched a vaccination campaign for the third dose and by the end of the month they should launch a protocol that removes the restrictions only for those who have received all three doses of the vaccine. In recent days, the League has also increased the checks for vaccinated people, to try to avoid epidemics after Thanksgiving, which in the American tradition is the one to spend with the family: from 24 November all players are tested daily for Covid. An increase that has led to the discovery of at least 10 cases in the last 3 days, including the LeBron James false positive. And including the 4 Charlotte players who sounded the first alarm of 2021-22.
