First batch of 700 athletes to soon resume training in Romania

Bucharest, May 6 (IANS) The first batch of some 700 Romanian professional athletes will soon enter their camps to resume training, but with test-negative certifications for COVID-19, the Minister of Youth and Sports Ionut Stroe has said.

“In the first phase I know that at least 700 high-performance athletes want to be tested,” Stroe told a press conference on Tuesday, adding that “right now we can talk about football, the First Division and the Olympic teams,” reports Xinhua news agency.

The Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Health issued a protocol with recommendations for resuming the training of performance athletes after May 14, at the end of the state of emergency declared amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The sports activity will be able to resume gradually. For a start, individual sports that are practised outdoors… We will have discussions with each federation separately,” the minister said.

According to him, every participant in the training camp must comply with the provisions regarding training only in isolation, and athletes and coaches will not be able to leave the training base.

He mentioned that athletes, before entering the camp, must stay in total isolation at home for two weeks, so must coaches, doctors and staff, while at the end of the isolation all would be tested for COVID-19.

Only those tested negative will be admitted to the training bases, stressed the minister.

None of Romania’s national and Olympic teams have made centralised preparations since mid-March when the Ministry of Youth and Sports ordered to stop all sports training and competitions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Romania entered on March 16 a one-month state of emergency, which was subsequently extended by one more month to May 14. The eastern European country reported 325 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bring the total number of confirmed cases to 13,837, with 841 fatalities.

–IANS

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