Cairo: Eighteen members of Egypt’s national under-20 team, now in Tunisia for a football North African tournament, have tested positive for the coronavirus, Egyptian officials have said.
Seventeen players in the team and their coach Rabie Yassin had been confirmed ill with the virus, but without showing symptoms, Jamal Mohammed Ali, the deputy head of the Egyptian Football Association, said.
They were among 28 members of the team who have travelled to Tunisia, he added. According to him, all the 28 showed negative results when they were tested in Egypt before the trip to Tunisia.
Ali is due Tuesday to fly to Tunisia to inquire after the squad’s situation.
Second testing
Second testing in Tunisia conducted on the infected members proved that three are free of COVID-19, spokesman for the team Walid Maher said in media remarks.
The Egyptian squad will play Libya later Tuesday in the U20 Africa Cup-qualifying competition.
“The team will play without its full line of strikers due to infections. But the players are in high spirits and keen on achieving a positive score in the match,” he added.
The squad’s assistant coach Abdel-Sattar Sabri will manage the Egyptian team during the game in the absence of Yassin who has been taken to a hospital in Tunisia, Egyptian media said Tuesday.
