More medal contenders have had to withdraw from the Short Course World Championships at the last minute.
South African Matthew Sates will be scratched at the technical meeting, coach Tom Rushton told SwimSwam on Tuesday. Sates, like many South Africans, is having trouble getting out of the country because of the prevelance of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which is the World Health Organization’s latest “variant of concern.”
While scientists are still learning more about the omicron variant, early research shows that it is more viral, but produces milder symptoms, than the world’s current dominant variant, the Delta variant. There is also concern that current vaccines are less effective against Omicron.
While Rushton is officially at the meet with the Estonian team, and especially his trained athlete Kregor Zirk, he is also the personal coach of Chad le Clos. Le Clos left South Africa in order to attend the International Swimming Leauge and has not returned, so he is still expected to compete, and Rushton is going to informally represent South Africa at the meet’s technical meeting because the rest of the delegation is stuck at home.
Olympic gold medalist and new World Record holder in the 200 breaststroke Tatjana Schoenmaker won’t attend either. She confirmed to SwimSwam that the travel ban is also impacting her ability to make the meet.
That leaves a South African team of Le Clos, Brad Tandy, Tayla Lovemore, and MC Pulford. Tandy and Lovemore train in the United States, and Pulford trains in Australia. That four swimmer roster is a drop from the 19 South Africans who were originally entered.
Countries around the world have scrambled to put travel restrictions in place from South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first discovered, though some scientists think that Omicron infections there are peaking just a month after the variant was first discovered. Because of the timing of the news of Omicron spreading around the world was so close to the start of the championships, any creativity in working around travel bans was limited.
South Africa is currently averaging over 20,000 daily cases of COVID-19, which is its highest of the pandemic so far. That is a rate of around 34 cases/100,000 population.
The UAE, meanwhile, is one of the few countries in the world that is currently seeing very low, and still declining, case counts. The country is averaging only 74 new cases per day. That’s less than 1 per 100,000 residents in the country of 10 million. The UAE has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with Bloomberg reporting that almost 84% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, and that over 30% have received a booster dose. In South Africa, only 26.1% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Other late withdraws from the meet so far include Abbie Wood (mono), Penny Oleksiak (back), and Felipe Lima (personal).
Meanwhile, Chad Le Clos in Abu Dabhi : 🕺
Chad Le choker will be demolished by Kristof „the VO2 max machine“ Milak in Fukuoka.
Don‘t worry about that.
This is ridiculous. Why ban only south-african? Why not the Europeans? From what I know, the most cases of omicron is in Europe no? This is xenophobia and racism, thats it.
Omg omicron variant please cancel this swim meet and every other swim meet ever until we get this variant under control! Seriously this is unsafe I’m shaking
No more meets until MA is vaccinated. I fear for his life.
That’s funny. 😁
This sucks. Omicron variant is all over the place now. Just test them and let them travel if they’re negative. Lots of places have restricted travel from African countries where omicron is present, but not from other countries where it’s also been detected. B/n that and the US & EU not allowing patent waivers to allow cheap generic versions of vaccines to be produced, it’s clear that people in power don’t mind Covid spreading as long as they can profit off of it.
Yesterday it was anounced the FIRST death by omicron in Europe. After 3 weeks talking about it. Its ridiculous how they are managing this thing.
Governor of Colorado is the way to go. BASED
It takes a while to die from Covid. There’re thousands of people w/ omicron that just got to a hospital yesterday that’ll die from it in three weeks.
Ppl are aggressively stupid
Are you attacking the swimmers by any chance
Will this likely affect Sates’ getting out of the country to go to uga?
From what I have read, yes! Also any South Africans already in USA studying will probably want to go back to SA for Xmas and then probably not able to get back to USA after!….assuming this travel ban is still in tack then. It might be lifted but they don’t know that….. real bummer!
I would guess that most South Africans studying in the US don’t normally go home for Christmas, but I’d double guess that they won’t be this year.
I disagree with first statement…most go home for Xmas. But agree with second statement that most won’t this year and that is unfortunate
South Africans studying in the US most definitely try to go home for winter break if they can afford it, as they get to enjoy a nice month of summer back in SA.
he won’t be going to UGA
😡😡