Former NBA basketball star and delegate to the CBA Chairman Yao Ming  Photo: VCG

The Chinese Basketball Association, or better known as its shorthand name the CBA, has announced to restart its season from June 20, amid further containment of the COVID-19 epidemic in China.

The Chinese sports league made the announcement on Thursday afternoon via the CBA official Sina Weibo account. According to the post, the remaining games of the season will be staged in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province and Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province.

Such a decision has been approved by the country's health and sports regulators, it stated in the post. 

A senior communication official from the CBA league told the Global Times on Thursday that basketball players and team staff shall be required to take nucleic acid tests before the season reopens and games will be held without an audience inside the stadium.

The recovered season will have another 16 regular games before 12 teams qualify for the play-offs. The first two rounds will be the single-elimination and semi-finals and the final will be the best of three sets.

Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Su Qun, a  wellknown basketball commentators in China and editor-in-chief of the Basketball Pioneer newspaper, also confirmed with the Global Times the "no-audience" ruling for the CBA's reinvigorated season.

The CBA season has been suspended for nearly five months since the Chinese lunar New Year holiday period in late January.

The 2019-20 CBA regular season was halted due to the COVID-19 outbreak since January 24, and teams and players have had a prolonged mid-season break for 132 days until now.

Former NBA star players including Jeremy Lin Shuhao and Stephon Marbury are among the foreign players and coaches in the CBA league.