Two Bangladesh Women’s Cricketers Found Positive With Omicron Variant Of Covid-19 Virus

Zahid Maleque, Bangladesh health, and family welfare minister said on Saturday that the two women cricketers who arrived from Zimbabwe have tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

The new Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is highly infectious and spreads faster than the delta variant. It was first discovered in South Africa in November and since then multiple countries have put travel bans on not only South Africa, but other African countries like Botswana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and likewise.

The ICC was forced to cancel the 2022 Women’s World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe which led to all the teams returning back to their home countries. The team was placed under institutional quarantine upon their arrival in Bangladesh while being regularly tested. The players continued to return negative tests before the confirmation of the two cases on December 6.

We Will Keep Them Under Watch For Two Weeks: Zahid Maleque, Bangladesh Health And Family Welfare Minister

Zahid Maleque, Bangladesh health, and family welfare minister, on December 11 (Saturday), confirmed that two Bangladeshi women cricketers were found positive of the omicron Covid-19 variant. And he further stated that both the players have been placed in isolation immediately and will be kept under medical supervision, while the contact tracing is being carried out.

”It will take time to recover and according to the protocol we will keep them under watch for two weeks and they will be released after recovering fully. We are doing contact tracing and testing everyone who had come close to them,” Maleque was quoted by Cricbuzz.

Before this, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has communicated that the national team’s quarantine was extended upon the discovery of two positive Covid-19 cases in the team that had returned to Dhaka on December 1.

“The team members, who were sharing the same room, had returned negative results in the two tests conducted in Dhaka on December 1 and 3. However, the report from a third PCR test on December 6 has shown both to be Covid-19 positive.

As such, the mandatory isolation of the team, which was due to end today (Monday, December 6, 2021), has been extended as per the Covid-19 Management Protocol of the BCB. The team members will undergo further tests and evaluation during the extended isolation,” the BCB had said in a statement.

The cricketers were supposed to leave the hotel on December 6 after completing quarantine, but now with the extended time period, they will have to complete a 14-day quarantine now, BCB’s women’s wing chairman Nadel Chowdhury confirmed.

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