It seems like an alternate reality but Australia showed that the sport is possible up to full stadiums, with fans without masks and great athletes on the field.
This weekend a practice tennis tournament was played in Adelaide with more than 4 thousand people in the stands, thanks to strict measures taken by the Australian government, which said the city has no infection rates for Covid-19.
Figures like Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal they didn’t believe what it meant to play with full seats again, something they’d missed for a year.
“It was worth it because you made it especially for us. We haven’t played in public for 12 months and this is very special ”, says Nole.
According to statements of Australian Health Minister, Greg HuntLast Friday, the country had not been infected in any of the states for the past 12 days.
For this reason, he congratulated citizens for following the rules to reverse the number of infected, which reached its highest peak in August 2020.
“That’s testament to the work of our medical professionals, our public health teams., from Australians everywhere because of the way they’ve complied with distance requirements, the way they’ve protected each other, the way they say, ‘I’m coming to be tested,’ ”said Hunt.
‘A WIDER PERSPECTIVE IS NEEDED’
For the tournament in Adelaide, the tennis players had to arrive a few weeks in advance to undergo an isolation quarantine, as that event will serve as a prelude. to the Australian Open, which starts next Monday.
During that period, the players had agreed times to train individually to maintain social distance. These measures were even more stringent because on January 16 it was reported that a plane carrying 47 tennis players had landed in Australia with people testing positive.
But it has all been worth it to see a full stadium again, with fans without fear, because the minimal number of infections allows. This even when some tennis players complained that they had to stay in the hotel all day during their quarantine.
About, Rafael Nadal told CNN that tennis players lacked a “broader perspective” Appreciate Australian measurements.
AUSTRALIA, THE EXTREME IN FRONT OF THE CRISIS
Until the night of January 31 Australia had recorded 909 deaths during the pandemic, in addition to having only 59 active businesses across the country, and a total of 28,818, representing just 0.1 percent of the population.
Those numbers represent the other extreme of the pandemic, that in the United States the country most affected by the coronavirus has more than 442 thousand deaths and 26 million cases, the latter, which corresponds to 8 percent of the population.
In Mexico, Mazatlán has been the case of “success” for having three games with fans since last semester, although with a capacity of half a stadium. The percentage of the population that has suffered from Covid-19 in our country is 1.4 percent, although with testing policies very different from the United States or Australia, with far fewer people being subjected to it.
Stadiums with audiences have also been seen in Japan, although in different circumstances, 80 percent visitors since last year though as an experiment thinking about the Olympics and the fans were forced to wear masks and not shout, very different from what happened to the avid fans in Adelaide.