Tennis Balls Don't Transmit Covid

by: Mike/TennisCT

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been questions about the safety of tennis balls themselves. Could you get sick by handling tennis balls during play? If you passed a tennis ball to someone else, could you both be at risk? There hadn't been any real data shared about whether or not tennis balls themselves could harbor coronavirus. Until now.

According to a study released by Public Health in Practice, there is now evidence to suggest that tennis balls (as well as golf balls, footballs and cricket balls) cannot transmit virus particles. Here is an abstract from the study:

"Objects passed from one player to another have not been assessed for their ability to transmit severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We found that the surface of sport balls, notably a football, tennis ball, golf ball, and cricket ball could not harbor inactivated virus when it was swabbed onto the surface, even for 30 ​seconds."

While most of us had assumed that tennis balls were the least of our concerns in staying safe this year, we now have the evidence to support it. While the sport of tennis itself is one of the safest you can play due to its physical distancing, now we also know that the balls themselves cannot effectively transmit the virus.