With the Ukrainian soccer championship in full swing, the Metalurg team from Zaporizhia was supposed to have a match against the Rukh club in the western city of Lviv on July 4. But that didn’t happen.
Roughly a third of Metalurg’s 32 players have tested positive for COVID-19, the soccer club announced the same day. The athletes learned they had contracted the disease from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests conducted before they had arrived in Lviv.
All the players have now returned home. “No one is panicking and (everyone) accepts this situation with understanding,” Metalurg said in an official statement.
“The game with Rukh was postponed. The most important thing is to follow all the recommendations of the doctors and the laboratory center.”
According to the Zaporizhia regional laboratory center, five Metalurg players have already been hospitalized, while eight more players with COVID-19 are currently in isolation at home under the supervision of doctors.
Previous COVID-19 tests that were conducted on the athletes two weeks ago were negative, the Zaporizhia City Council stated on its Telegram messenger channel.
Common problem
Based in Zaporizhia, a city of 750,000 people located 565 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, Metalurg is now the seventh of Ukraine’s 25 Premier League soccer clubs to face COVID-19 outbreaks since March, when the first case was identified in the country.
Just a month ago, half of the Karpaty Lviv soccer club’s 65 players and staff members also tested positive for the virus. The same happened with the Donetsk-based Olimpik soccer club, as well as the Minaj club from Zakarpattia Oblast and several others.
Currently, Ukraine’s western oblasts and Kyiv have the highest numbers of new COVID-19 cases, as well as the largest numbers of people who have died from the disease.
Zaporizhia Oblast is not among the worst-hit regions, but the cases there continue to grow. As of July 4, 4,588 people have contracted COVID-19 in the oblast and 17 have died.
CORONAVIRUS IN UKRAINE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- As of 9 a.m. on July 4: 1,227 people have died from the disease in Ukraine and 21,155 have recovered.
- 47,677 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Ukraine as of July 4. The first case was identified on March 3.
- Ukraine entered the fourth stage of lifting quarantine on June 10.
- Indoor restaurants, domestic flights resumed on June 5, international flights on June 15
- How the Ukrainian government has been responding: TIMELINE
- Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro subways reopened on May 25.
- Why the Kyiv Post isn’t making its coverage free in the times of COVID-19.
- With international travel on hold, Ukrainians prepare to travel across Ukraine
- TripsGuard website tracks coronavirus travel restrictions in 84 nations.
- Where to buy masks.
