Publish Date: 18 April 2020 - 15:29

TEHRAN, Apr. 18 (MNA) – Iran’s Sports Medicine Federation is planning to kick off a screening program to primarily detect COVID-19 in those athletes who are going to participate in the upcoming Olympics.

Although the Tokyo Olympics has been postponed for a year, the COVID-19 outbreak among sports society has urged officials to devise a special plan to respond to the outbreak before it is late.

According to Reza Saeedi, the federation’s spokesman, the project will start from this week and accordingly, 52 Olympians who have already won Olympics quota will be screened.

In an interview with Mehr News Agency on Saturday, he said that the screening has two stages. In the first stage, experts will contact every Olympian and ask a couple of questions regarding their probable symptoms, the status of training, and diet and so on. If anyone of the athletes is suspected to be affected by the virus, the next stage which is physical examination will be performed, he noted. 

Discus thrower Ehsan Haddadi, the London 2012 silver medalist, was the most prominent Iranian athlete infected by the novel virus and then defeating it. 

Saeedi also noted that among 3.6 million athletes across the country, only eight have contracted the disease so far and none have been hospitalized.

According to the latest announcement of the Iranian Health Ministry on Friday, so far more than 79,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 while the number of those recovered has crossed 54,000. The disease has also claimed 4,958 lives in Iran. 

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