Bianca Andreescu’s return to competitive tennis has hit a snag after two people on a charter flight from Abu Dhabi to Melbourne tested positive for COVID-19.
Andreescu, who hasn’t played a match since she suffered a knee injury at the WTA Finals in October 2019, was among 24 players on the flight arranged by the organizers of next month’s Australian Open.
The 79 people aboard the flight were notified late Friday that a crew member and a passenger on the plane had tested positive on arrival in Melbourne. The passenger had provided a negative test within 72 hours of the flight’s departure.
On Saturday, Andreescu’s coach Sylvain Bruneau revealed that he was the passenger who tested positive. He said he followed the COVID protocols while in the Middle East and didn’t know how he was infected.
The players will be confined to their hotel room for 14 days and will not be able to take advantage of practice opportunities within the Melbourne bubble. They will finish their isolation in time to participate in one of the warm-up events scheduled for the week prior to the Australian Open but they will be at a distinct disadvantage because they will not have had access to practice or fitness facilities.
The 20-year-old Andreescu burst on the international scene in 2019 when she won the Rogers Cup and then took the U.S. Open to become the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam singles title. The knee injury, an unrelated leg injury and concern over COVID-19 forced her to skip the entire 2020 season.
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Andreescu, who is currently No. 7 in the WTA Tour rankings, had been training in Dubai while most of the other players on the flight had been playing in a WTA tournament in the Abu Dhabi.
Other players on the flight included Angelique Kerber, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Ons Jabeur and Belinda Bencic.
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