Play.
KD is likely to exit COVID-19 protocols this week.
Steve Nash gives an update on the returns of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. The time is 0:25.
4:30 PM
According to a memo sent to teams Monday, NBA players and coaches who have been vaccinated can now clear the six-day quark if the data shows they are no longer at risk to be infectious.
The NBA and National Basketball Players Association have agreed to change the way they do business to make it easier to return to competition. The new protocol has players, coaches, staff and referees in it.
People can still test out of the quark with two negative results in 24 hours.
NBA players are testing positive at an unprecedented rate. A total of one-hundred-seventy-two players have entered into the league's health and safety protocols in the past two weeks. The league started a two week stretch of increased testing, which is expected to return a lot of positive tests.
The status of many players who are already in the protocols is expected to be affected by this reduction in the time it takes to get into the building.
If they meet the new standard, players will be back to play on the seventh day if they test positive on Day Zero. The data shows that boosted individuals clear the virus out of their system at a much faster rate than those who aren't.
Sources said that the decision to shorten the quark to six days was based on expert research and data that indicated that no one with a cycle threshold over 35 has shown to be infectious again after five or six days.
The number of times a test has to be repeated to find the virus in an individual. A 35CT is fainter than a 20CT. The NBA and NBPA have relied on data from the league's own infectious-disease experts, the CDC and models and research in the United Kingdom.
The omicron variant was responsible for as much as 90% of the league's recent COVID cases, according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
