MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. Russia’s four-time Youth Olympics medalist in artistic gymnastics Sergei Naidin will undergo two follow-up tests for COVID-19 next week, Valentina Rodionenko, senior coach of the Russian national gymnastics team, told TASS on Friday.
Naidin, 18, was taken to a hospital in the Moscow Region town of Solnechnogorsk from the training center outside Moscow on April 1 with a suspicion of the novel coronavirus infection. His primary test showed a suspected presence of the virus in his body.
"Sergei Naidin feels very well, he just called me and said he had been scheduled to undergo follow-up tests on April 8 and 10," Rodionenko commented.
At the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Naidin won two silver medals (All-Around and Pommel Horse competitions) and two bronze medals (Floor Exercise and Parallel Bars).
On April 1, all members of the Russian gymnastics team were ordered to leave the training center in Novogorsk, in the Moscow Region, following reports of suspected coronavirus cases on the territory of the training base. Naidin's and Head Coach of the Russian national gymnastics team Andei Rodionenko’s primary tests suggested a coronavirus infection.
Valentina Rodionenko informed that the follow-up test of Head Coach Andrei Rodionenko did not confirm the results of the primary test. "The virus was not confirmed," she said. "We had doubts immediately about the primary test, because both he [Andrei Rodionenko] and Naidin were in normal health condition," Rodionenko continued.
"We have been taking temperature three times a day, there were neither running noses nor coughing and this is why we had doubts immediately," she explained. "If it is necessary, we will undergo another follow-up test [for Andrei Rodionenko], but conclusions must not be drawn from the primary test as they [doctors] saw that we were all completely healthy."
Valentina Rodionenko added that primary tests of two staff members of the Novogorsk training center also showed a suspected coronavirus infection. "Everybody talked yesterday only about gymnasts, who allegedly brought the virus to the training center, but nobody mentioned two staff members of the center," she said. "It was disappointing to hear accusations against us [gymnasts]."
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. To date, more than 1,030,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 54,100 deaths have been reported. That said, over 219,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.
So far, a total of 4,149 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 281 patients having recovered from the virus. The country’s latest data indicates 34 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.