The Covid-19 is invited again to the Australian Open. After the disruptions ahead of the tournament, a new five-day lockdown was ordered Friday in Melbourne to counter a possible resurgence of the epidemic, and the rest of the tournament will therefore be held behind closed doors at least until Wednesday.
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The Prime Minister of the State of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, announced that this confinement, which will begin at midnight Australian time, was necessary to stop a “hyper-infectious” cluster of contaminations with the English variant of the coronavirus, which appeared in a hotels having served for the quarantine of several players and participants in the Australian Grand Slam.
File photo, AFP
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews.
So far 13 people have been infected among hotel staff and their families.
The Prime Minister of the State of Victoria clarified that the place where the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2021 season which started on Monday is taking place, and which brings together most of the best players in the world, was considered a “place of work ‘which can continue to operate with a limited number of employees.
This means that the Australian Open can continue, but behind closed doors.
In the process, the organizers of the tournament have indeed announced that the event will take place without spectators, at least for the next five days.
Friday matches maintained
“We inform ticket holders, players and staff that from midnight Saturday (Australian time, editor’s note) there will be no spectators on the Australian Open site for the next 5 days” , announced the tournament leadership in a statement, indicating that a refund system will be put in place.
The schedule for Friday’s matches, notably with world No.1 Novak Djokovic against American Taylor Fritz or the duel between local darling Nick Kyrgios and Dominic Thiem, is unchanged.
“The matches scheduled for this Friday, during the day and in the night session, are maintained as planned, with the anti-Covid measures already in place,” added the organizers.
Last week, half a thousand players and accredited people who spent their pre-tournament fortnight in the Grand Hyatt had to isolate themselves following the discovery of a positive case in an employee of the hotel.
All had to undergo a new test which turned out negative.
All the preparation tournaments for the Australian Open had been suspended for 24 hours pending the results of these tests, but had finally resumed without further disruption.
Complicated preparations
The Australian Open had been authorized to maintain the reception of spectators as planned, i.e. 25,000 to 30,000 spectators per day, sometimes even giving the world tennis circuit the impression of having reconnected with the passionate atmosphere of the pre-pandemic.
Preparations for the tournament, which had been postponed by three weeks due to the coronavirus, had already been greatly complicated by the epidemic.
After a 2020 season upset by the pandemic, the organizers had made the bet to maintain this major event, at the cost of extraordinary logistics due to exceptional health constraints.
All the players and accredited members (staff, entourage, referees …) had to travel to the island-continent, largely free of the virus, on board about fifteen planes specially chartered by the organizers mid- January and submit to a strict fortnight upon arrival. Only five hours of daily outing, strictly timed between tennis, physical training and meals, were allowed to them.
Seventy-two players were even forced into full quarantine, without any permission to leave their hotel rooms, after several cases of Covid-19 were detected among passengers or crew on three of the flights to Melbourne.