ESPN NBA analyst Doris Burke has received a positive diagnosis for COVID-19 but says she is now symptom-free more than two weeks after her initial concerns of an illness.
Burke addressed her diagnosis with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Friday’s episode of The Woj Pod. She told Wojnarowski she was tested March 17 but did not find out until eight days later, on Wednesday, that she had a positive diagnosis.
The delay gave Burke time to process that she could be positive for the virus, she said.
“I started to believe, even though my symptoms did not seem to line up with the typical symptoms, I believed, given the nature of my profession, the number of people I encounter, that I did in fact have exposure to the virus,” Burke said.
Burke said she felt her first symptom March 11 — the same day the NBA shut down play after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus. Burke was working the Denver Nuggets–Dallas Mavericks game for ESPN, and she said she noticed feeling tired during lunch with her broadcast crew.
“Man, I am so tired right now and my head is pounding,” Burke recalled thinking. “And looking back, those were my symptoms. And we’ve heard so much about shortness of breath, fever, tightness in your chest, chills, body aches, etc. … That really was my primary symptom throughout this was this extraordinary fatigue.”
She told Wojnarowski the fatigue was so bad that she could not be out of bed for more than five minutes from March 14 to 17.
Burke acknowledged feeling a moral dilemma about being tested amid a shortage of tests in the United States, but she wanted to know if she could be exposing others in her family, particularly her daughter and her daughter’s fiance. She also said she tried to reach out to people she had been in contact with to let them know she wasn’t feeling well.
She said she is now symptom-free, telling Wojnarowski, “I’m so incredibly thankful to be feeling well.” She said she continues to keep a safe distance from others but is glad to no longer be spending all her time limited to her bedroom.
Burke has covered basketball for ESPN since 1991. She was named a full-time NBA game analyst before the 2017-18 season, becoming the first woman to hold that role, and received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame