Tennis players competing at the Australian Open this month will continue to participate if they test positive for covid-19, tournament director Craig Tiley said Monday, a major departure from the tournament’s strict pandemic policies over the past two years that have seen crowds. Nine-time champion Novak Djokovic will be expelled for refusing to get vaccinated.
Australian Open players will not be required to be tested for covid-19 to participate in the tournament, Tiley told reporters, according to several media outlets.
Athletes who are tested won’t want to reveal the effects and will be able to play even if they test positive for the virus, Tiley added.
Tiley, also chief executive of Tennis Australia, suggested feel-good players stay home, advice that also applies to the more than 12,000 workers taking part in the event.
The policy replacement reflects what’s happening on the wider Australian network and is for policies in other sports like cricket, Tiley said.
The tennis leader said that facing the difficult situations of the virus is a “normalized environment for us” and affirmed that “there will be players who will compete with Covid”.
The resolution allowing players without testing, and even with Covid positive, to participate in the Australian Open marks a major policy shift from the tournament’s strict needs last year, when players had to be vaccinated and go through mandatory testing. The strict rules, which also saw fans barred from matches for involving an outbreak, meant Novak Djokovic, then a returning champion and outspoken skeptic of Covid vaccines, was expelled on public fitness grounds and unable to protect his title. The change also underscores Australia’s conversion technique to the virus after years of implementing some of the world’s toughest Covid brakes. For two years, the country imposed strict lockdowns, severely limited internal movement and almost completely closed its foreign borders, trapping tens of thousands of Australians overseas.
The Australian Open is the first of 4 Grand Slam tennis tournaments held in the year. It’s unclear whether the others, the French Open, Wimbledon (which takes place in the UK) and the US Open, will be able to do so. It imposed some sort of verification requirement on players last year. The regulations on what happens if a player tests positive also have national guidelines. Of the four Grand Slam hosts, only France still has mandatory isolation requirements for other people who test positive for Covid.
In theory, the other vaccine needs in position for each Grand Slam country can lead to a scenario where a vaccinated and covid-positive athlete can participate in a tournament while an unvaccinated, covid-negative athlete cannot. French Open, Wimbledon and US Open did not require players to be vaccinated in 2021, the US Open has a predetermined policy through a national policy requiring foreign visitors to be vaccinated. This policy is still in effect. Like the U. S. It has no binding isolation requirements for other people who test positive for COVID, this means that a player vaccinated with COVID can technically compete, while an unvaccinated player without COVID cannot compete unless tournaments impose their own restrictions.
U. S. Policy The U. S. government requiring arriving foreigners to be vaccinated recently has been extended until April, meaning unvaccinated players, possibly still coming with Djokovic, are unlikely to be able to compete in upcoming Miami Open and Indian Wells tournaments. It’s unclear whether that rule will have been at ease during the time the U. S. Open begins. U. S. in August.
Djokovic is likely to miss Indian Wells and Miami Open due to the U. S. vaccination mandate. U. S. Covid (Forbes)
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