Top-flight match canceled moments before kick-off due to Covid-19 scare

Brazil’s 2020 Serie A national football championship began this past weekend, despite the country recording 100,000 Covid-19 deaths and 3 million confirmed cases. The specter of the coronavirus pandemic made its presence felt, with one fixture postponed 15 minutes before kick-off, after ten players on one side tested positive for Covid-19.

Football club Goiás, from the Center-West city of Goiânia, were set to make their league debut at home to São Paulo on Sunday afternoon, but the team were informed hours before that ten members of their squad had tested positive for coronavirus, including eight of their starting line-up.

The match was eventually postponed at 3:45 pm local time, just 15 minutes before it was scheduled to begin. Goiás’s opponents, São Paulo, had already taken the field ready to play.

Serie A: Problems with testing

Twenty-six members of the Goiás squad had taken tests on Thursday, but new ones were required due to “failures to prepare the samples.” New tests were taken on Friday, but the results were only made available on Sunday morning. If the remainder of the squad now requires a two-week quarantine, Goiás will miss their next four league matches. 

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