Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic warned that if Novak Djokovic skipped the mandatory fourteen-day isolation for contracting COVID-19, it would be “a serious violation” of the country’s laws.
The Serbian tennis player admitted to having attended a face-to-face interview on December 18 in Belgrade despite knowing that he had been infected because “it was a long-standing commitment” and so as not to “look bad with the journalist.”
This goes against the anti-COVID legislation that Serbia had at the time, which forced those infected to keep a fourteen-day quarantine. Djokovic underwent a PCR on December 16, but assured that he did not know the result until the 17th, despite the fact that the documents from the laboratory that carried out the test revealed that they reported the positive just a few hours after the PCR was done.
“If you are positive, you have to isolate yourself,” Brnabic said in an interview with the BBC. “I don’t know when he got the results and when he saw them. That’s a bit of a gray area that only Novak can answer,” he added.
Djokovic is now free in Australia and has been able to train these days in Melbourne Park, but is awaiting the decision of the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, who can exercise his personal right to cancel the Serbian’s visa and request his deportation again.
Brnabic noted that he hopes Djokovic can stay in Australia and play in the tournament, but added that he does not agree with the Serb’s decision not to be vaccinated: “What matters to me is that we support Novak, but at the same time, both for the country and for me, vaccination is something very important and the only way to end this pandemic,” said the politician.
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