Indian Hockey team captain Manpreet Singh, four others test positive for COVID-19
Aug 07, 2020
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], Aug 7 : The Sports Authority of India (SAI) on Friday said that Indian hockey team captain Manpreet Singh and four other players have tested positive for coronavirus.
Other players diagnosed with the virus are Surender Kumar, Jaskaran Singh, Varun Kumar and Krishan B Pathak, who is the most recent among the five players to test positive.
"Hockey players Manpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Jaskaran Singh, and Varun Kumar, who reported to the National Hockey Camp in Sports Authority of India's National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Bengaluru along with the team, after a home break, have tested COVID-19 positive," SAI said in a statement.
"This was revealed since as a proactive step, SAI made it mandatory for all athletes, who reported back to the camp to take a rapid COVID-19 test upon arrival. Since all the athletes who tested positive had travelled together, there is a high likelihood that they contracted the virus while travelling from their hometowns to Bengaluru," the statement added.
SAI said that all four players tested negative in the "rapid test" but later, Manpreet and Surender began to display some COVID-19 symptoms.
"All four tested negative in the rapid test. However, since Manpreet and Surender began to display some COVID-19 symptoms later, they along with the other ten athletes who had travelled together were given the Quantitative RT-PCR test on Thursday, and the four have been found to be COVID-19 positive," the statement read.
Moreover, few test results are still awaited. "Though the test results have still not been handed over to SAI, but the state government has informed the test results to the SAI authorities, and few test results are still awaited," the statement read.
The skipper said he is doing fine and hoping to recover soon.
"I am self quarantined on the SAI campus and I am very happy with the way SAI authorities have handled the situation. I am very happy that they made the testing of athletes mandatory. That proactive step helped in identifying the problem right in time. I am doing fine and hope to recover very soon," Manpreet said in a statement.
