Heat close training facility after second player tests positive for coronavirus

While the NBA season is set to resume this month at Walt Disney World in Orlando, the Miami Heat have appeared to take a step backward.

According to ESPN, the Heat have closed their practice facility after a second player tested positive for the coronavirus.

Miami will have players at the facility for NBA-mandated COVID-19 testing requirements, but the gym for individual workouts will remain closed before the Heat head to Orlando on Wednesday.

Derrick Jones Jr., who tested positive for the virus last week, has been following the NBA's protocols outlined in the return-to-play plan. The second player who tested positive has not been identified.

The Heat aren't the only team to have players test positive. Twenty-five out of 351 players have tested positive for COVID-19, the NBA announced Thursday. Denver's Nikola Jokic, Indiana's Malcolm Brogdon, Brooklyn's DeAndre Jordan and Spencer Dinwiddie and Sacramento's Buddy Hield, Alex Len and Jabari Parker are among other players who tested positive last week

Despite the coronavirus surging in Florida, the league still plans to move forward with a July 30 resumption date.

In order to reduce the risks of the coronavirus spreading once teams arrive in Orlando, any player who tests positive for the coronavirus will be placed in "isolation housing" and take another test to confirm that they're positive, per Charania. A player must then test negative twice before returning to the NBA's Disney campus.

Every player will be tested nightly while on campus, and the results are expected to come in the morning. The NBA is in discussions with national coronavirus testing providers such as BioReference Laboratories, LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics and Vault Health/RUCDR Infinite Biologics at Rutgers to finalize its testing program, Charania reports.