Wait continues for athletes at SAI Bengaluru as COVID-19 positive cook dies

New Delhi: The wait for athletes to train outdoors at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru is now set to be longer after one of the cooks there passed away and also later tested positive for coronavirus. The centre is where a number of leading Indian athletes have been staying throughout the lockdown that started on March 25.

Among the athletes who are at the facility include Indian men's and women's senior hockey players and 10 members of the athletics squad who are all training for the postponed Tokyo Olympics.

The incident means that the players will have to be confined to their rooms and the facility will be sanitised as per the protocol.

The development comes at a time when the Sports Ministry and SAI are formulating a plan for outdoor training to resume in Bengaluru and the National Institute of Sport (NIS) in Patiala for athletes who are bound for the Olympics or in the fray for qualification.

SAI, however, rejected the reports that the cook had been in a meeting which was attended by around 30 people.

"Whoever was there in the meeting, only five people were there including the person who died. So the other four have been sent on quarantine.

"He was in the administrative block and that's separate from the residential block where the players stay. They have not been allowed to come out of their rooms at all. It is not like that they met too many times," a SAI official told IANS.

"Protocol makes it imperative to test everyone and it takes 24 hours for the results to come in. The day after he died, it was found out that he was COVID positive but he died of cardiac arrest."

The official said that the process of sanitising the facility may take up to five days.