ESPN’s Doris Burke announces positive coronavirus diagnosis

Doris Burke, shown with fellow ESPN announcer Mark Jones, felt extreme fatigue and a headache on March 11, but still worked what was the final NBA game prior to the league's shutdown. She tested positive for COVID-19 about a week later.Michael Ainsworth/Associated Press

ESPN broadcaster Doris Burke revealed Thursday she has tested positive for COVID-19.

The former Providence College basketball star and respected NBA analyst told colleague Adrian Wojnarowski on his podcast that she started feeling sick March 11.

Still, she worked the Nuggets-Mavericks game that night on ESPN, which was also the night news broke that Jazz center Rudy Gobert had tested positive for the virus. No NBA games have been played since.

Burke said she received the results confirming her positive diagnosis on Wednesday, eight days after she was tested, and has not had symptoms since.

“I’m doing quite well now, to be perfectly honest with you,’’ she said. “But I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks.”

Burke said she began feeling ill during lunch with play-by-play voice Ryan Ruocco and ESPN’s broadcast team the day of the Nuggets-Mavericks game.

“I looked at my colleagues … and said, ‘I am so tired right now,' " she recalled. “’My head is pounding.

“Looking back, those were my symptoms. We’ve heard so much about shortness of breath, fever, tightness in your chest, chills, body aches, etc. For me, looking back, my symptom was extraordinary fatigue."

Burke said she struggled to get out of bed from Saturday, March 14, through Tuesday the 17th, which was the day she was tested in Philadelphia.

“I kid you not, I could not be out of bed for five minutes without needing to go back to bed and lay down," she said. "It was that Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day, I was thinking, ‘Boy, I don’t have any of the normal symptoms, but it seems to me I probably should get tested.’ ”

Burke is among several high-profile NBA personalities to acknowledge testing positive for COVID-19. Among them are Gobert and Donovan Mitchell from the Jazz, the Celtics’ Marcus Smart, the Nets’ Kevin Durant, and the Pistons’ Christian Wood.