Beijing: The Chinese Football Association (CFA) confirmed Wednesday that four women players, including star striker Wang Shuang, will miss next week’s Tokyo Olympic women’s football qualifying matches in Sydney as they hail from the deadly coronavirus hit areas, the official media reported.
“Three Wuhan natives Wang Shuang, Yao Wei, and Lyu Yueyun as well as Li Mengwen from Zhejiang province can’t join the team to Australia due to the epidemic control,” the CFA said in a statement.
The areas were under complete lockdown since January 23 to prevent people from travelling in and out of the areas to control the spread of the epidemic.
The death toll Wednesday due to coronavirus went up to 132 in China and the confirmed infection cases increased to nearly 6,000.
The decision was made as Wuhan city and Zhejiang cities are part of Hubei province which has become the epicentre of the coronavirus officially known as ‘2019-nCoV’, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
With the prevalence of ‘2019-nCoV’ virus across the country, Chinese authorities have taken strong measures, putting in place a nationwide prevention and control mechanism to curb the novel coronavirus.
Former Paris Saint-German (PSG) player Wang, who was named Chinese ‘Female Footballer of The Year’ for the third straight time in January this year, has been widely regarded as the key playmaker of the national team. Midfielder Yao also featured in all four matches during the Steel Roses’ World Cup journey in 2019.
“Our whole Chinese team including 21 players have received the 2019-‘nCoV’ virus test before departure to Australia, and the results were all negative,” CFA said. It said that the team arrived Wednesday at Brisbane and will head to Sydney in two days.
PTI