MELBOURNE (AP) – The director of the Australian Open expects the first major of the year to begin on Monday, as planned, despite the players being among hundreds of people who had to isolate themselves again, after a worker in the quarantine hotel tested positive for COVID-19.
“We are absolutely confident that the Australian Open goes ahead,” Craig Tiley told reporters on Thursday. “We will be starting on Monday and we have no intention of changing the schedules.”
“The probability is very low of having some kind of problem,” he added.
As Tiley spoke, Melbourne Park looked practically empty in the background. All matches in the six preparation tournaments were postponed as the state government announced overnight that there were new cases of coronavirus related to the event.
Tiley is confident that those contests will resume on Friday and end on Sunday.
Health authorities reported that 520 people who flew to Melbourne for the Australian Open needed to isolate themselves where they are staying and had to undergo tests.
A special center was in charge of carrying out the tests. On Thursday, some closed-door practices were held, but the players there were few and they carried out scattered activities in a venue that had hosted 89 games on 16 courts during the previous day.
The draw for the Australian Open has been postponed to Friday, just over a week after the players began to leave their initial quarantine.
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Preparations have been intermittent and chaotic. The tennis players, their delegates and all the people who came to Australia to participate in the contest had to spend 14 days in quarantine inside a hotel.
Of them, 72 players had to keep a stricter confinement, because some passengers on their chartered flights tested positive for coronavirus. This meant that they could not leave their rooms at all, unlike the other players, who were able to go out for five hours a day to practice.
Anyone connected to the tournament and quarantined at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt hotel was suspected of having had at least casual contact with the 26-year-old employee who tested positive. All those people will be tested in a special facility.
Allen Cheng, deputy chief of health for the state of Victoria, said authorities were seeking to be extremely cautious.
“We think that the risk to other guests in the hotel, as well as to the tennis players and their entourages, is relatively low, because they were in the rooms, as opposed to the staff outside the rooms,” Chang said at a press conference. “So we are analyzing them to be sure. This is a precaution. “
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