Some of the players who are training in Cambodia for the tournament displayed flu-like symptoms after warm-up exercises on February 17 evening, and subsequent rapid tests showed they had contracted with the virus, said the coaching board.
They also confirmed that a coaching assistant also tested positive for the virus.
The five suspect cases were immediately transferred to an isolation room for health surveillance. They are still waiting for PCR tests to confirm the results.
An ongoing COVID-19 outbreak is dealing a blow to the 2022 AFF U23 Championship that is taking place in Cambodia. Myanmar and Indonesia earlier withdrew from the tournament due to several infections detected in their teams.
The organising board of the tournament convened an emergency meeting on February 17 to salvage the situation. They later decided to relax the rules that allow a team to replace a player from the final registration, with only 12 hours’ notice now needed to be given to the AFF Secretariat. Such replacement players also don’t need to be registered as part of the preliminary registration list.
If a team have registered 35 players in the preliminary registration and 24 in the final registration, they can now replace up to 10 players from the list.
