Ukraine national team doctor: “There were restaurants in Lucerne, but the danger

Ukrainian national team doctor Anton Glushchenko spoke about the situation around the League of Nations match Switzerland – Ukraine, which was canceled due to positive tests for coronavirus on Andriy Shevchenko’s team.

– Unlike our colleagues from Germany, who demonstrated their willingness to solve any problem that might arise in the process of organizing a duel with their national team and carried out their work at the highest level, even in the context of compliance with medical protocol , the Swiss showed no such desire. What I mean: after PCR tests identified five infected people as part of the Ukrainian delegation in Leipzig, the German Football Association conducted further investigation on match day. To do this, the German colleagues brought their mobile laboratory, at 1:00 p.m. we passed the tests, and three hours later we received the results. They were all negative and the game played out. As for the Swiss, they refused to test on game day and categorically assigned it to the night before the game, on November 16.

– What is the advantage of testing on game day?

– The fact that you clearly know who is healthy in the team at the moment and who is not. After all, a lot can happen overnight. However, Lucerne’s chief medical officer was adamant: “If there is at least one infected with you or with the Swiss team, the match will not be played.” Frankly, I would like to see if that decision would have been made if the infection had been on the Swiss team and not ours. A Ruslan Malinovsky was infected with it, his temperature rose immediately after arriving in Switzerland. We immediately isolated him in his room and he no longer had contact with the team. However, all these arguments did not affect the health doctor. He believed that we constituted the risk of infection for others.

– According to Krivtsov and Moraes, who had previously been sick with COVID-19, why did their tests come back positive?

– These results were false positives. It happens that the dead cells of the virus give such an indicator. However, this does not mean that they will be reinfected. After the boys got sick, we issued special UEFA certificates to them, confirming that they had already overcome the infection and could be allowed to play. This document was accepted, by the way, and the aforementioned health doctor, who confirmed that the boys can move freely. They are quite healthy and, by the way, on their return to Ukraine they already had training at the club. In addition, we performed an antibody test, which confirmed that they were ill. Like the physical trainer Ivan Bashtovy, for whom he had not certified for the game, because he is not a player.

A strange decision and an even more strange situation in general, which came before the scheduled match of one of the most prestigious international tournaments, which is held under the auspices of UEFA. This seems especially absurd in the context of the fact that restaurants and other visitor establishments were operating in Lucerne at the same time, where you can safely go without preliminary testing for COVID-19. But for the local chief medical doctor, our soccer players, who had previously received negative test results, posed a great danger. Of course, those nuances influenced the general mood to some extent. However, the guys proved to be true fighters, no one complained, they all worked professionally.