Kaizer Chiefs likely to boycott second consecutive PSL game as South African Football Players Union to hold meeting
With uncertainty whether Kaizer Chiefs will show up for a second successive match against Golden Arrows, it has been learnt that the South African Football Players Union is set to hold talks on the matter.
Chiefs made a decision not to play their DStv Premiership match against Cape Town City which was scheduled for this past weekend at the FNB Stadium.
The Soweto giants’ decision came on the back of a Covid-19 outbreak at the club, where no less than 31 positive cases have been reported.
Chiefs requested to have their match against the Citizens, as well as fixtures against Golden Arrows, Sekhukhune United, Royal AM and Maritzburg United postponed to avoid the risk of further spread of the virus and to allow those affected to recover while the Chiefs Village has been temporarily closed.
With conflicting views in the fraternity regarding the saga while the parties await on the league to make an official statement, it’s understood that SAFPU is set to meet to discuss how best the parties could reach an amicable solution.
“SAFPU is meeting today to discuss the Kaizer Chiefs matter with their focus mainly on the safety of the players. They are expected to finalise (the discussion) this afternoon and issue a statement,” said the source.
South African is the most affected African country for the Covid-19 Omicron variant after being the first nation to have detected and spread the virus.
Last week, as the globe geared efforts to battling third wave after many countries agreed on mandatory vaccination for populations, South Africa took a leap step to confirm a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the new omicron variant, health officials said on last Friday.
Health Minister Joe Phaahla told a news briefing that “It has emerged that hospitalization cases have increased for children under five years in the fourth wave.”
Phaahla said the new spike in infections over the last seven days has registered its presence in all the country’s nine provinces – with high positivity rates, except for the Free State and Northern Cape provinces which are still showing low positivity rates.
“Hospital admissions are mainly dominated by those who are not vaccinated and young people below the age of 40,” the minister said.
The National Institute of Communicable Diseases announced on Friday 3rd December it has detected 16,055 new cases bringing the total number of confirmed cases to more than 3 million.
This increase represents a 24.3% positivity rate.
It also reported a further 25 COVID-19 related deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 89,944 to date.
The majority of new cases are from Gauteng province which accounts for 72% of all infections followed by the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces each accounting for 6% and North West 5%.
Last week, South African scientists announced they had discovered a new COVID-19 variant with a large number of mutations compared to previous variants and reported it to the World Health Organization (WHO), which named it omicron.
Days later, a number of countries imposed travel bans on South Africa and other southern African countries, including Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
South Africa has expressed outrage over the travel restrictions with President Cyril Ramaphosa calling on countries to lift the ban saying: “COVID-19 is a global pandemic, and overcoming it requires that we (world) collaborate and work together as a collective.”
