Indian captain Manpreet Singh among four hockey players to test positive for coronavirus

Image Credits: Twitter/@@manpreetpawar07

Indian men's hockey team captain Manpreet Singh is among four players to test positive for novel coronavirus upon their arrival for training camp at the Sports Authority of India's National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Bengaluru recently.

Besides him, Surender Kumar, Jaskaran Singh and Varun Kumar, who also reported to the National Hockey Camp along with the team after a home break, have also been diagnosed with the pandemic.

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.

All four tested negative in the rapid test. However, since Manpreet and Surender began to display some symptoms of coronavirus later, they along with other ten athletes who had travelled together were given the Quantitative RT-PCR test on Thursday, and the four have been found to be positive.

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.

Meanwhile, a few test results are still awaited.

All athletes, including Manpreet, who reported to camp were undergoing quarantine as per the Health Ministry Guidelines and as a precautionary measure were kept in isolation to arrest the possibility of transmission of the virus. 

After being tested positive for coronavirus, Manpreet said, "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.”

The quarantined athletes did not interact with other athletes who were already present at the camp.The SOP of the state government and of SAI is being followed strictly across the campus.