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Abstract We note that the recent polynomial proofs of the spherical and complex plank covering problems by Zhao and Ortega-Moreno give some general information on zeros of real and complex polynomials restricted to the unit sphere. As a corollary of these results, we establish several generalizations of the celebrated Bang plank covering theorem. We prove a tight polynomial analog of the Bang theorem for the Euclidean ball and an even stronger polynomial version for the complex projective space. Specifically, for the ball, we show that for every real nonzero $$d$$-variate polynomial $$P$$ of degree $$n$$, there exists a point in the unit $$d$$-dimensional ball at distance at least $1/n$ from the zero set of the polynomial $$P$$. Using the polynomial approach, we also prove the strengthening of the Fejes Tóth zone conjecture on covering a sphere by spherical segments, closed parts of the sphere between two parallel hyperplanes. In particular, we show that the sum of angular widths of spherical segments covering the whole sphere is at least $$\pi $$.