MELBOURNE: Four more Australian Open participants, including one player, have tested positive for COVID-19 and more cases may emerge as tests continue, officials said Monday (January 18).
Health authorities in the state of Victoria have now reported nine diseases among travelers arriving in Melbourne on charter flights for the Australian Open, which takes place from February 8 to February 21.
“All four are related to the tennis (competition), and are all safely kept in a hotel quarantine,” Victoria’s chief statesman Daniel Andrews told reporters about the issues. new.
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Passengers on three Australian Open flights have now been hard-quarantined, including more than 70 players who cannot train for 14 days ahead of their first Grand Slam. year.
“I think the people who tested positive so far were seen before they went on the flights,” said Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.
“But it is the results of the test in the coming days that will give us a picture of whether anyone’s disease has been flown to them.
“That’s why the rules are so tight for these tennis players and their minds, as well as any other international reach.”
The growing number of diseases has prompted calls from pundits to postpone the Grand Slam.
“It’s time to be voluntary, time for Victoria to put ourselves first,” said 3AW radio presenter Neil Mitchell.
“Cancel the Australian Open. It’s not worth the risk.”
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Australian tennis chief Craig Tiley said on Sunday that the tournament would start as expected but that the governing body would look at changing the lead tournaments to help players who could not train due to quarantine.
Andrews said the government was still supportive of holding the Grand Slam and supporting health officials to deliver it safely.
“We believe we have struck the right balance,” he said.
“If there was an awareness from the public health team that that balance could not be struck, that it was too high a risk, well we would not have gotten the incident.”
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Some players have complained about quarantine conditions and said they have not been told they would not be allowed to train if there were issues on their flights.
Spanish tennis website Novak Djokovic, number one in the world, had written to Tiley calling for quarantine restrictions to be reduced for players, including the reduction of the mandatory 14 days solo and players move to “private houses with tennis courts” for training.
The report drew support from Australians on social media, with Djokovic and players wanting to look at their “welfare”.
Andrews said the biosecurity protocols would not change.
“It doesn’t mean that everyone likes them, but that’s not the world we’re in,” he said.
“This is a wildly pandemic. There are rules that must be followed.”
Australia’s biggest uprising of COVID-19 from returning passengers hit workers at quarantine hotels in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, began last year.
About 800 people died in the second wave of the uprising and about 5 million people were looted in a hard lock that lasted nearly four months.
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