Covid-19: Melbourne is reconfiguring itself, the Australian Open goes behind closed doors

It's definitely complicated for the Australian Open.

The city of Melbourne, where the event is taking place, will again be confined for five days from midnight Saturday (Australian time), Victoria Prime Minister Daniel Andrews announced on Friday February 12.

The tennis tournament will therefore be held behind closed doors, at least until Wednesday.

A health bubble will be set up, and "only the players and their teams, as well as the members of the personnel who will not be able to do their work from home, will be authorized on the site", specified then the director of the tournament, Craig Tiley.

#AusOpen update.

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- #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) February 12, 2021

If this confinement is necessary, it is to stop a “hyper-infectious” cluster of contaminations with the English variant of the coronavirus, which appeared in one of the hotels which served for the quarantine of several players and participants in the Australian Grand Slam.

Since then, 13 people have been infected among hotel workers and their families.

The Prime Minister of the State of Victoria clarified that the site where the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2021 season takes place was considered a "place of work", which can continue to operate with a limited number of employees.

A reimbursement system put in place

This means that the Australian Open, which started on Monday and which brings together most of the best players in the world, will be able to continue, but behind closed doors.

In the process, the organizers of the tournament have indeed announced that the event will take place without spectators, at least for the next five days.

The new guidelines will apply from midnight Saturday (Australian time).

For spectators with tickets for the following days, a refund system will be put in place, tournament management said in a statement.

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“Based on the feedback we have, the players just want to keep playing,” tournament director Craig Tiley said.

The schedule for Friday's matches, with in particular the world number one, Novak Djokovic, opposed to the American Taylor Fritz or the duel between the local darling Nick Kyrgios and Dominic Thiem, is unchanged, and the anti-Covid measures already implemented. place will apply.

An exceptional organization

Even before the launch of its first official matches, the Australian Open had experienced disruption related to Covid-19.

Last week, half a thousand people - players and accredited - having spent their pre-tournament fortnight in the Grand Hyatt hotel had to isolate themselves following the discovery of a positive case in an employee of the hotel.

All had been retested, which turned out negative.

The preparation tournaments for the Australian Open had been suspended for 24 hours pending the outcome of these tests, but had finally resumed without further disruption.

Before that, the preparations for the tournament, postponed by three weeks, had been made very complicated by the epidemic.

The Australian Open had been authorized to maintain the reception of spectators as it had been planned, ie 25,000 to 30,000 people per day in the public.

VIDEO.

Australian Open

: in quarantine, tennis players train in their hotel room

But this organization required extremely specific logistics.

All the players and accredited members (staff, entourage, referees, etc.) had to travel to Australia - largely free of the virus - on board about fifteen planes specially chartered by the organizers in mid-January and submit to a fourteen upon arrival.

Only five hours of daily outing, strictly timed between tennis, physical training and meals, were authorized.

Seventy-two players have even been forced into full quarantine, without any permission to leave their hotel rooms, after several cases of Covid-19 were detected among passengers or crew on three of the flights to Melbourne.