The duel between Acunsa GBC and Barcelona will have to wait. The Endesa League game, scheduled for today at the Palau (12.30 pm), was yesterday atPlaced because a third member of the Barça technical staff has tested positive of coronavirus, as reported last night by the Catalan club.
In principle Sarunas Jasikevicius, a Blaugrana coach, was not going to sit on the bench and neither was his assistant, the also Lithuanian Darius Maskoliunas, who tested positive for Covid-19 and were isolated yesterday in their respective homes. Late at night, the club reported that a third component of Barça’s technical team had tested positive, a situation that has led to the postponement of the match against Gipuzkoa Basket.
The GBC squad was already in Barcelona when it was confirmed that the match would not be played, and this postponement will disrupt the plans for the next few days. Both teams will have to find a date with the added difficulty that Barcelona plays the Euroleague and their calendar is more compressed than that of Gipuzkoa Basket. There are already a handful of games postponed in the ACB in this start of the league due to the detection of positives in the squads. In fact, the game that Herbalife Gran Canaria and Real Madrid faced this Sunday in Las Palmas, has also been postponed when a positive for COVID-19 was detected in the Canarian team.
Severe controls
According to the ACB regulations, each team must submit its players, coaching staff and the rest of the first team’s staff (about 20-25 people) to a PCR test in the 72 hours prior to an Endesa League match. In the event that one or more people test positive, the presumed infected must undergo a backup PCR test. If a backup test is positive, the entire team must be isolated to undergo a new test 48 hours after the first. If in that last control nobody tests negative, the game can be played normally. On the contrary, if a positive different from that of the person who originated this second massive control occurs, the ACB medical coordinator, after speaking with the doctors of the clubs, will assess the situation and decide whether the match should be suspended or for the opposite is played.
Many variables must be taken into account, such as the possibility that it is a person who has already had covid-19 in previous months and still has traces of the disease. In any case, if after performing the PCR tests a team obtains three positives, they will not be able to play or travel.
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