Up to 600 players and support staff connected to the Australian Open will have to isolate until they have been tested for COVID-19 after a hotel quarantine worker in Melbourne returned a positive result for the virus on Wednesday, February 3.
Play at the 6 warm-up events for the Grand Slam at Melbourne Park is likely to be heavily disrupted on Thursday but Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said it should not impact the Australian Open itself, which starts on Monday.
“There is a number of about 500, 600 people who are players and officials and others who are casual contacts,” Andrews said at a news conference late on Wednesday.
“They will be isolating until they get a negative test and that work will be done tomorrow.”
Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, reintroduced the compulsory wearing of masks in indoor public places from Thursday while private gatherings were reduced from 30 people to 15.
About 1,200 players, coaching staff and officials arrived in Australia at the middle of last month for the year’s first Grand Slam and went into a mandatory 14-day isolation.
The players were allowed 5 hours outside for training but 72 of them were confined to hotel rooms for the two weeks after passengers on 3 charter flights taking them to Australia tested positive to the novel coronavirus.
Participants of the Australian Open were given the green light to begin exiting COVID-19 quarantine from end of last week with most of them involved at the ATP, WTA events at the site of the harcourt major.
“At this stage there is no impact on the tournament proper,” Andrews added. “I must say (the Australian Open) is important to us but the issues are much broader and that is about public health and public safety.”
Tennis Australia, who are the organizers of the February 8-21 Grand Slam, did not immediately respond to request for comment. – Rappler.com
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