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Golden State Warriors won't allow any fans at games; top health official calls on other teams to follow
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a House Oversight Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Golden State Warriors won't allow any fans at games; top health official calls on other teams to follow

Large gatherings are a problem

After the city of San Francisco ordered a halt on events of more than 1,000 people, the NBA's Golden State Warriors announced that home games for the foreseeable future would be played with no fans in the arena, according to ESPN.

The Warriors' announcement Wednesday comes shortly after Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during congressional testimony that all NBA teams should do the same.

"We would recommend that there not be large crowds. If that means not having any people in the audience when the NBA plays, so be it," Fauci said Wednesday, MarketWatch reported.

The question now becomes whether other teams in the NBA and other leagues nationwide will also bar fans from attending events. The NBA, MLB, and NHL seasons all run through the spring, and the NCAA basketball tournament is scheduled to begin later this month.

ESPN reported:

Sources told Wojnarowski on Tuesday that the NBA board of governors has a scheduled conference call with the commissioner's office Wednesday. The call is expected to include one designated ownership representative of each team, sources said. There are two additional calls set for Thursday for team presidents and general managers, sources said.

The NBA is discussing a number of possibilities, including moving some games to NBA cities that have yet to suffer outbreaks, eliminating fans from buildings for games or, more drastically, suspending game operations for a period of time.

The two primary efforts being made by other countries who have been hit hard by coronavirus are to limit unnecessary person-to-person contact through varying levels of quarantines and large event bans, and increasing the volume of testing so that there are fewer people carrying the virus who don't know it.

The United States is still struggling to get testing capability up to a desirable level. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said it's not clear how many people in the U.S. have been tested, and that the government is working to create reliable tracking methods.

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