All footballers, coaches, officials and staffs at the national team’s residential practice camp completed their Covid-19 tests twice. On Monday, two institutions collected samples from Sarah Resort in Sreepur Upazila of Gazipur from morning to noon.
Medical representatives of ICCDDRB followed by Praava Health drove from the capital one after another and collected samples of 26 players, 6 officials including coaches and manager and staffs for the tests of Covid-19.
The samples of 4 footballers were collected from Dhaka who tested positive in previous report and stayed back at their respective places. The reports of all the tests are expected to be given by Wednesday evening.
Total 18 booters and coach Masud Parvez Kaiser were earlier tested positive when their tests were done at BSMMU from August 5 to 8. The possibilities of false positive reports were anticipated soon after the results of eight members altered in two days due to technical error.
Those whose results of the two latest tests come positive would be kept isolated in the camp before going through another test a week later. In the meantime, all members are told to be staying separately and doing practice individually.
Head coach Jamie Day, who is due to arrive from London next week, called up 36 players for the preliminary camp ahead of World Cup and Asian Cup joint qualifiers in October-November.
Among them, two expatriate footballers – captain Jamal Bhuiyan (Denmark) and new face Tariq Kazi (Finland) – are stuck in Europe due to travel restrictions while three players – Matin Mia, Atiqur Rahman Fahad, and Masuk Mia Jony – were not released by Bashundhara Kings due to their previous injuries.
The remaining 31 players were advised to do their own Covid-19 tests before reporting to the national team. Only Bishwanath Ghosh was tested positive at Apollo Hospital while Nabib Newaz Jibon got ill at his hometown in Bogra and both stayed back home while the remaining 29 were available.
The BFF re-checked the Covid-19 status of 29 players again at BSMMU in three phases but the results were not same comparing to the ones previously done, which means whether the reports are false positive/negative or the players catch the virus in between two tests.
National team management committee of BFF decided to hold the tests twice again to get clearer view. All the members were sent to Sarah Resort except Bishwanath, MS Bablu, Nazmul Rasel and Sumon Reza and samples of all 30 players were collected today, said team manager Satyajit Das Rupu over the phone from Gazipur.
