The FDA Authorizes a Cheap, Fast Saliva Test—and the NBA Is Involved

Chantal Vogels studies bugs. A medical entomologist at the Yale School of Public Health, her expertise is mosquitoes, ticks and the nasty viruses they spread.

“Human research is new to me,” she said.

But she went from studying the very small to the very tall as part of a Yale team trying to solve the biggest problem in the United States through an improbable population of research subjects: NBA players.

That same Yale team was granted an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday for a...