There are still few days more to go until Melbourne begins to play the 2021 Australian Open. But the controversy is already set, all under the broad shadow of a pandemic that has changed several plans and altered the nerves of more than one.
As the Covid-19 outbreak ravages several countries, Australia has fought an intense battle to prevent the counterattack of the pandemic.
In the last 18 days, Melbourne has not registered local cases of coronavirus, due to the effort of the population and strict confinement measures. It insists zero cases in 18 days.
Perhaps as a result of this situation, Melbourne residents do not find empathy in the complaints of several tennis players, confined in quarantine for 14 days inside their hotel rooms. Nothing they did not know that was the mandatory condition established by the Government of the State of Victoria for those players who wanted to go to play the first Grand Slam of the year.
In fact, the tournament organization arranged charters around the world to search for them and offered them accommodation free of charge.
The Australian Open organization offered flights for the transfer of the players to Melbourne. In some of those trips, positive cases of Covid were detected.
The immediate resolution was to strictly isolate by close contact all those who participated in the affected flights, thus making it impossible to comply with the premise of leaving 5 hours a day to train in Melbourne Park, the only venue that has been converted into a health bubble.
This affected 72 players, including Guido Pella, who had already gone through a similar situation at the US Open last year, and Juan Ignacio Londero. Both will be in forced quarantine until January 29.
