SAN JOSE — Jonathan Becher, president of Sharks Sports & Entertainment, said Tuesday that to his knowledge, no one in the organization has tested positive for COVID-19.
The Sharks have not played a game since March 11 when they were in Chicago and SAP Center has not held an event since March 8, when San Jose hosted the Colorado Avalanche.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incubation period of COVID-19 and other coronaviruses ranges from two to 14 days.
The Sharks did announce March 12 that a part-time employee at SAP Center did test positive. That person, as of last weekend, was feeling better, according to a Sharks spokesman.
“If someone on our hockey staff, if someone on our team was going to test positive, they would have done so by now,” Becher said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “The fact that no player, no hockey staff, no full time employee in the building has ever seemingly been affected or tested positive is very reassuring that we at SAP Center have been safe.”
The Ottawa Senators and Colorado Avalanche, teams that played at SAP Center in early March before the NHL paused its season, each announced that two of their players have tested positive for COVID-19. Gord Wilson, the Senators’ radio color analyst, has also tested positive.
Becher said while he feels for those people, there is no way of knowing for sure how they contracted the virus. Both the Senators and Avalanche — on their respective road trips — also played the Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center.
“My first reaction is more human. I never want that on anybody, let alone a professional hockey player,” Becher said. “And then of course your mind does wander, could it be related to having played those games? You’ll never really know. It’s impossible to trace things. People went into grocery stores. They’re in Ubers, et cetera, they interact with people.
“One speculates, but we’ve been told by lots of people, no point in speculating. It seems highly unlikely, if it was related to playing at SAP Center, that was now more than 20 days ago.”
Becher said the decision to play three NHL games at SAP Center earlier this month after local health officials urged a moratorium on large public gatherings was made after he called executives from other Bay Area sports teams and the league consulted with its own health experts.
“Most professional sports franchises, including us in the NHL, don’t have the ability to call off games by themselves,” Becher said. “That typically comes from the league that they participate in.”
The Sharks played three games — all before thousands of fans — after the Santa Clara County Public Health Department on March 5 recommended all public gatherings of over 1,000 people be canceled or postponed due to growing concerns about the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“The first question was, is this a mandate? Can you play? And we said, ‘Yes, we can, and if we play, we have to make these following recommendations,’” Becher said. “(The NHL) said, ‘OK we’d like to consult with our health authorities as well.’ (We) go back and forth and ultimately, we made the decision to play.”
Other sporting events went on at the same time, with the Warriors playing home games at Chase Center in San Francisco on March 5, 7 and 10. and the San Jose Earthquakes playing a home game March 7. The NBA suspended its season March 11, and the NHL and MLS suspended their seasons the following day.
The decision to play any games in early March after cases of the coronavirus were discovered in the area came under scrutiny.
In an email to Bay Area News Group earlier this month, Dr. John Swartzberg, a specialist in infectious disease and clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, reiterated what he told other news organizations — that playing those games was a mistake.
“I was publicly vocal that sporting events should shut down weeks ago,” Dr. Swartzberg told The Guardian in a story published March 13.
“I thought it was just irresponsible of the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors to hold public games with fans. So I think all the advice and now dicta to not have these gatherings is a wise thing to do in the face of a pandemic.”
Becher noted the Sharks did follow another of the county’s recommendations, urging fans that were sick or at high risk to stay away from the downtown arena. But the game with the Minnesota Wild that night, and the ones with the Senators and the Avalanche, went on as scheduled.
“There were two parts of the recommendation,” Becher said. “We did take the part that talked about what to do if you’re going to do a large gathering.”
