No worries, mate
Tiley: Aussie Open to go on despite positive case
More than 500 tennis players and officials preparing for the Australian Open were ordered into isolation in Melbourne after a worker at a quarantine hotel tested positive for the virus. However, organisers of the first Grand Slam of the year are confident it will start as scheduled on Monday.
MELBOURNE: The tournament director of the Australian Open expects the year’s first tennis major to start on Monday as scheduled despite players being among the hundreds of people forced back into isolation after hotel quarantine worker tested positive for Covid-19.
“We are absolutely confident the Australian Open is going to go ahead,” Craig Tiley told media yesterday. “We will be starting on Monday and we have no intention of changing times.”
As Tiley spoke, Melbourne Park in the background was almost empty. All matches in all six warm-up events were postponed after the state government announced overnight that there had been new coronavirus linked to the tournament.
Tiley said he expected those tournaments to resume today and finish on Sunday.
Health authorities said 520 people who flew to Melbourne for the Australian Open needed to isolate in their accommodation and get tested.
The draw for the Australian Open has been postponed to today, just over a week after players started leaving their initial quarantine.
Preparations have already been disruptive and chaotic for the so-called Happy Slam. All players and their entourages and everyone else flew into Australia for the tournament had to spend 14 days in hotel quarantine. Of those, 72 players were forced into hard lockdown after passengers on their charter flights later returned positive tests for the virus. That meant that unlike the bulk of the players who were allowed out for five hours daily to practise, they couldn’t leave their rooms at all.
Anyone connected with the tournament and who quarantined at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Melbourne were deemed to be casual contacts of the 26-year-old infected man and were undergoing testing at a dedicated facility.
Allen Cheng, Victoria state’s deputy chief health officer, said authorities were being extra cautious.
“We think the risk to other guests at the hotel, so tennis players and their accompanying staff, is relatively low because they were in the rooms at the time as opposed to staff who were outside the rooms,” Cheng told a news conference. “So we’re testing them to be sure, and it’s precautionary.”
Under the current plans, up to 30,000 spectators are expected daily at Melbourne Park for the two-week Grand Slam event and there was no immediate indication of a change.
The Australian Open chartered 17 flights and used three hotels in Melbourne for the bulk of the players to quarantine and had other secure accommodation and facilities in Adelaide, South Australia state, for some of the biggest stars, including Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.
Players were tested every day during quarantine and all were cleared before the tune-up tournaments began at Melbourne Park on Monday.