NBA players, staff asked to help virus researchers

Dr. Priya Sampathkumar gets asked by her two teen-aged sons every day when they can expect to see NBA games again.

She's among the doctors desperately trying to answer that question and the NBA is now trying to help.

Sampathkumar is on the staff at the Mayo Clinic, which is starting to get support from the NBA and its players for a study that will aim to shed more light on how antibody testing can help the medical world further understand COVID-19.

NBA teams were told this week about the study through an invitation for players and staff to volunteer to take part.

"I think this is one step towards understanding when we might be able to open things back up," said Sampathkumar, the Mayo Clinic's Chair of the Immunization and the Infection Prevention and Control Specialty Councils.

"It's certainly not that at the end of the study, we're not going to be able to say, 'OK, on X, Y and Z date everything can open up again.'"
"But it also is a study that is attempting to do sort of a higher-level validation of a tool that will be more easy at point of care or at home. So, it has two parts to it."