KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 (NNN-Bernama) — With their minds focused on doing well at upcoming multi-sports events, national athletes will be sacrificing their Eid-ul Fitr celebrations this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
National Sports Council (NSC) Athletes Division director Jefri Ngadirin said with the Tokyo Olympics and Hanoi SEA Games in their sights, the athletes will only be celebrating Syawal on a small scale in their training centres and are not allowed to go out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur plan is to have moderate celebrations involving athletes and coaches staying in camp. But it all depends on the COVID-19 situation then,\u201d he told Bernama when contacted Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The athletes returned to quarantine-based training at the NSC facilities in Bukit Jalil and a few other places, including the Academy Badminton Malaysia (ABM), the past few days due to the fresh Movement Control Order (MCO) announced by the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jefri said NSC opted for quarantine-based training after taking into consideration the MCO and the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOf course, NSC is worried about possible disruptions to training and competitions due to COVID-19. That’s why we decided to have quarantine-based training camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“All athletes and coaches under the NSC programme have been advised to always abide by the set standard operating procedure (SOP),” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said all the athletes and coaches had undergone the RTK Antigen test three weeks ago and would take another one next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Media reports said that 11 sepak takraw athletes and coaches were tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an IFTAR event organised by the Sepak Takraw Association of Malaysia recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier, 15 players had been infected at ABM since April 17, while a junior athlete and his coach had also tested positive in the national bowling camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Jefri said the national muay thai squad are expected to depart for Thailand next week for training and competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
— NNN-BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 (NNN-Bernama) — With their minds focused on doing well at upcoming multi-sports events, national athletes will be sacrificing their Eid-ul Fitr celebrations this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. National Sports Council (NSC) Athletes Division director Jefri Ngadirin said with the Tokyo Olympics and Hanoi SEA Games in their sights, the athletes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288,190],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122115"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}