Minnesota Timberwolves Holds Study Of COVID-19 Antibody

JAKARTA - The NBA basketball club, Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Mayo Clinic medical education center, Rochester, Minnesota, conducted a study related to COVID-19 antibodies. NBA teams will be involved.

Launching ESPN, Thursday, May 21, Dr. Robby Sikka, a drug and technology expert who has been hired by Timberwolves since 2019 to optimize the health of their players, is believed to be leading the study.

The study aims to determine the percentage of players, coaches, executives and staff of NBA teams who already have antibodies to the corona virus.

"We studied this disease. In the last two months we learned a lot," said Sikka.

"If in the next two months, we learn more, mitigate the risk, then we will all move more quickly to find out when it is safe enough to return to competition," he added.

NBA teams have recently started to open their training facilities, but the league's top ranks are still looking for the safest way to do activities and mitigate the risk of transmission between players and coaches.

Robby Sikka and the NBA clearly taking this one step at a time. "Is the Dow going to 15,000 or is it going to 25,000? The only person you don't trust with that answer is the person who says they definitely know. We have to be truthful about what we know and what we don't know "pic.twitter.com/rzPA1e2FGA

- Dane Moore (DaneMooreNBA) May 20, 2020

Earlier, in mid-April, Stanford University was already carrying out a similar study among workers in the United States baseball league, Major League Baseball (MLB).

The study found that only 0.7 percent of the sample population had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies.

The COVID-19 pandemic is already taking its toll among NBA basketball players, including the mother of Timberwolves star Karl-Athony Towns, who died of contracting the disease on April 13.

Before his mother died, Towns donated US $ 100,000 to help Sikka and her colleagues at the Mayo Clinic carry out research related to COVID-19.

The study, led by Sikka and Timberwolves, is expected to be completed in June.