Boxing team’s doctor tests positive for Covid-19

NEW DELHI: In the first Covid-19 case in the Indian sports since the resumption of sports activities post lockdown, the senior boxing team’s doctor, Amol Patil, who’s a part of the national camp for elite boxers, on Monday tested positive at the NIS Patiala campus.
Patil’s test report returned positive late in the evening, after which he was shifted to a dedicated state-run care facility outside the campus. The test reports of other men and women boxers, who had been waiting for their results for over a week, also came along with that of Patil, but all of them have tested negative.
But men’s boxers, including Amit Panghal and Ashish Kumar, will be rested again on Tuesday as they were at the same quarantine facility where the doctor was staying. The Olympic core probables were quarantining at the STC boys’ hostel at the polo ground outside the campus. Patil and other coaching staff members were staying on a separate floor of the same hostel.
After the doctor’s positive report, Indian men’s team chief coach, CA Kuttappa, women’s team head coach, Mohammed Ali Qamar, and assistant coach, Kheemanand Beniwal, will be retested for covid-19 on Tuesday, as they all were in contact with Patil. The doctor, who had been with the boxing team to the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and last year’s World Championships, is learnt to be carrying mild symptoms.
However, the positive test result has put a question mark on the conduct of the camp, scheduled from August 1, and it’s been learnt that the camp could be called off. The development has come as a setback for the SAI, which has taken up the mantle of restarting the camps in Olympic disciplines following the derecognition of 57 national sports federations (NSFs) by the Delhi High Court.
Meanwhile, as the SAI launches its investigation into the alleged breach of quarantine protocols by boxers Vikas Krishan, Satish Kumar and Neeraj Goyat at the NIS campus, it’s been learnt that they managed to get Covid-19 test reports within a span of 24 hours whereas other boxers had to waited for around 8 to 9 days (till Monday evening) for their reports to arrive, raising suspicion about the testing process itself.