MOSCOW, May 13. /TASS/. An annual ice hockey competition between players from international youth ice hockey clubs, the 2020 Junior World Cup, will not be organized this year due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus, Alexei Morozov, the president of the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), told TASS.

The Junior World Cup is an annual international tournament of youth hockey clubs that is sanctioned by the IIHF (the International Ice Hockey Federation) and was first organized in 2011.

The tournament usually features eight teams representing youth club players from different countries. Russian clubs won the tournament seven times, while the young teams from Canada and Sweden clinched victory in 2012 and 2015 respectively.

"Unfortunately, this year the Junior World Cup will not be organized due to the current situation [with COVID-19]," KHL chief Morozov said in an interview with TASS.

COVID-19

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. According to the latest statistics, over 4,357,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 293,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 1,611,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, a total of 242,271 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 48,003 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 2,212 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.