Bengaluru, Aug 7: India’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Jaskaran Singh and Varun Kumar have tested COVID-19 positive after reporting to the national hockey camp in Sports Authority of India’s National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Bengaluru along with the team.

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.

All four tested negative in the rapid test. However, since Manpreet and Surender began to display some Covid symptoms 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 Covid positive.

Though the test results have still not been handed over to SAI, the state government has informed the test results to the SAI authorities and 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.

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.

Speaking from Bengaluru, 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.”

(IANS)