72 tennis players in lockdown after virus cases on flights

MELBOURNE (Agencies): A further 25 tennis players were forced into quarantine in Australia ahead of the season’s first tennis major after another positive coronavirus test on a charter flight, taking the total number of competitors isolating in hotel rooms to 72 on Sunday.

The positive test came from a passenger who was not a member of the playing contingent, Australian Open organizers said. But all 58 passengers, including the 25 players on the flight from Doha, Qatar that arrived in Melbourne on Saturday, now cannot leave their hotel rooms for two weeks. Organizers had previously announced that 47 players had to quarantine after four COVID-19 cases emerged from two other charter flights bringing players, staff, officials and media to Australia.

Some players have expressed anger at being classified as close contacts merely for being on board those flights with people who later tested positive and, therefore, forced into a harsher quarantine than the broader group of players who’ll be allowed out of their rooms to practice for up to five hours per day.

But local health authorities have said all players were warned of the risks in advance. And any players considering bending the rules have been warned. Breach quarantine regulations and there’s the prospect of heavy fines or being moved to a more secure quarantine complex with police stationed at their doors.

Three cases were announced Saturday and Victoria state’s COVID-19 quarantine commissioner Emma Cassar told a news conference on Sunday that there’d been a fourth positive test involving a person flying in for the Australian Open. So far, none has involved a player. Three cases emerged from the flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne, officials said, including a member of the air crew, a coach and the latest being a member of the TV broadcasting team. The other case was a coach who took the charter flight from Abu Dhabi to Melbourne.

All four had tested negative before boarding their flights to Australia. All four have now been transferred to a health hotel. Sylvain Bruneau, who coaches 2019 U.S. Open champion Bianca Andreescu, posted on social media to say he was on the flight from Abu Dhabi and had tested positive.

Two-time Open champion Victoria Azarenka and the 2014 U.S. Open runner-up Kei Nishikori were reported to be on the flight from Los Angeles. All passengers from both of those flights are in hard lockdown.

Cassar, who is also in charge of the state’s prisons, said there’d been cases of people ”testing” the quarantine procedures, triggering a warning and a conversation with the state’s police, but no attempts to escape quarantine.

”There’ll be zero tolerance for that behavior,” Cassar said. ”This is designed to make people safe. We make no apologies for that.” Several players in quarantine, including Sorana Cirstea of Romania, Belinda Bencic of Switzerland and Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan complained in social media posts that the rules seemed to have changed between what they saw before traveling to Australia and what was being imposed in Melbourne.

Cirstea posted on Twitter: ”If they would have told us this rule before I would not play Australia … I would have stayed home.

They told us we would fly at 20% capacity, in sections and we would be a close contact ONLY if my team or cohort tests positive.” But government officials have rejected those claims.

”There’s no other way you can consider this. If you’re on a plane 16-24 hours, with air that circulates throughout the plane, you are a close contact,” Cassar said.