Tokyo Olympics 2020: Four Chinese players hailing from coronavirus-hit areas to skip women's football qualifiers

Beijing: The Chinese Football Association (CFA) confirmed on 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, official media reported. [caption id=“attachment_5977331” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] “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. The areas were under complete lockdown since 23 January to prevent people from travelling in and out of the areas to control the spread of the epidemic.

The death toll on 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 and Zhejiang 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. China’s football governing body noted that the four players will now strictly comply with the national and local epidemic control requirements to conduct quarantine observation at home, with no health abnormalities in their daily report. Former Paris Saint-German 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 China’s national team. And 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,” added the CFA, saying that the team have arrived at Brisbane on Wednesday and will head to Sydney in two days, the report said.