The Australian Open was thrown into chaos on Wednesday when up to 600 players and officials were told to isolate and get themselves tested after a worker at a hotel they are staying in was tested covid-19 positive.<\/p>\n
Victorian State Premier Daniel Andrews said the worker last worked at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Melbourne on January 29 and anyone present there was considered a casual contact.<\/p>\n
With over 1000 players, coaches and officials jetted to largely virus-free Australia last month for 14 days lockdown before the opening Grand Slam of the year. The Great Hyatt was one of the allocated hotels used.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a number of about 500, 600 people who are players and officials and others who are casual contacts,\u201d Andrews said in a late-night press conference.\u201dThey will be isolating until they get a negative test and that work will be done tomorrow,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
However, he did not expect the precautionary move to impact the Australian Open, which is scheduled to start on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may have an impact on tomorrow\u2019s play in the lead-up events. But at this stage, there\u2019s no impact to the tournament proper,\u201d he told.<\/p>\n
Currently, six ATP and WTA tournaments are being played at Melbourne Park to get players fit for the upcoming Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
While most players were allowed to train during their lockdown, 72 were isolated to their hotel rooms in Melbourne after eight covid-19 positive cases were detected on the charter flight that brought them to Australia.<\/p>\n
Strict and stringent restrictions on incoming travel have helped to keep covid-19 at bay in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI must say that is important to us but the issues are much broader and that is about public health and public safety,\u201d Andrew said, but added: \u201cThis is one case, there\u2019s no need for people to panic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian Open was thrown into chaos on Wednesday when up to 600 players and officials were told to isolate\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[689],"class_list":["post-16534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}