JOHANNESBURG – Cricket South Africa's Chief Medical Officer Dr Shuaib Manjra will accompany the men's national team on their short tour of India to provide on the spot advice about the coronavirus.
South Africa will play the first of three One-Day Internationals against India next Friday in Dharamsala. That will be followed by matches in Lucknow and Kolkata. As of Friday afternoon, no cases of the coronavirus had been reported in any of those three cities.
The team will leave for India on Sunday morning.
However Al-Jazeera reported on its website on Friday, that cases of coronavirus had increased sharply from six to 31 in the last week in India.
The International Indian Film Academy Awards (the Bollywood Oscars), due to be held in Indore, were postponed on Friday over concerns about the spread of the virus.
In a statement on Friday, Cricket SA said it was monitoring the situation closely and had taken advice from a range of organisations including the United States’s Centre for Disease Control, the World Health Organisation, the South African Ministry of Health and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
The players have been "appraised of hygiene precautions, avoidance measures, and symptom recognition in addition to being provided with travel kits," according to Cricket SA.
The Proteas will be traveling to India via Dubai and landing and spending Monday in Delhi - travel between the cities in India will be via chartered flights reducing the risk even further.
On Thursday, the chairman of the India in Premier league’s governing council, Brijesh Patel told Reuters that the South African series and the lucrative IPL T20 tournament, which follows, will be going ahead as scheduled. “We are keeping a tab on the situation,” said Patel.
Manjra will be travelling with the team as Team Doctor and will keep abreast of developments in India and worldwide and advise Cricket SA and the team's management accordingly.