MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. German footballer Benedikt Howedes, a defender with the Russian Premier League’s (RPL) football club Lokomotiv Moscow, has not rejoined the team, the club’s press office announced to TASS on Wednesday.

The RPL press service stated on Tuesday that all foreign football players and members of the coaching staff of the Russian Premier League clubs returned to Russia before the restart of the national league’s suspended season this summer.

"Howedes is not present among the club’s players," the statement from Lokomotiv Moscow FC reads.

The 32-year-old German footballer joined Lokomotiv Moscow FC for the 2018/2019 RPL season and his contract with the club is in force until the summer of 2021. As part of the German national football team Howedes became the winner of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. He is currently the only foreign player from Lokomotiv Moscow FC who has not returned back to Russia to join the club.

Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said late last month that the Russian ministry would render its assistance in the return of foreign footballers and specialists working in Russian football clubs as soon as a relevant document was approved.

The RPL Executive Board made a decision last Friday to resume matches of the Russian Football Championship on June 21. They had been postponed several times earlier this year due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus.

Prior to the RPL shutdown, the league’s clubs completed 22 out of 30 scheduled rounds of the championship. On April 1, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) recommended restarting national football tournaments.

Last Friday, President Vladimir Putin approved a proposal from the Sports Ministry of Russia to reopen training camps for national teams’ athletes, on conditiion that all disciplinary and sanitary measures in view of the COVID-19 pandemic are strictly observed.

During an on-line session with President Putin on May 22, regarding the current sanitary and epidemiological situation in the country, Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin presented a step-by-step report on the restoration of the system of national training camps. Putin said in response that "when the national teams are at their training camps they are really in a self-isolation regime and, in fact, the most important is to abide by sanitary measures."

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 5,701,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 352,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 2,445,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, a total of 370,680 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 142,208  patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 3,968 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.