NEW DELHI:
All India Football Federation
's (AIFF) Leagues CEO
Sunando Dhar
on Wednesday assured that it is "safe to resume" the
I-League
in the first week of March, two months after it was suspended due to a COVID-19 outbreak inside its bio-bubble in Kolkata.
The AIFF on Tuesday said that the country's second tier league will resume on March 3, and the bio-security bubbles will be functional from February 20.
"I think it would be very safe for us to resume the league. We are good to go," Dhar said.
The league was put on hold amid a surge in
COVID
cases driven by the
Omicron variant but the country's positivity rate has since come down.
"See the omicron has been different from other variants of COVID and what we saw is that it spreads very fast but the good thing is that you recover fast too, within about five or seven days.
"The records show that Omicron is not as deadly or adversely affects the body as the other other variants.
In hindsight, Dhar believes the AIFF's decision to suspend the league in the first week of January was a correct one.
"There were high chances of the disease spreading in the hotel with multiple teams staying in the same hotel. So, after consulting Dr
Harsh Mahajan
from our medical committee I think we took the right decision of stopping the league and sending the players home where they could isolate, recover and then come back.
"Dr. Mahajan had predicted that the numbers would drastically fall after six weeks and that is what we are seeing, and by the time we come back in February and the matches begin in the first week of March, there would be further reduction in the number and the positivity rate."
He said everyone has recovered from their COVID infections.
On January 3, the I-League was suspended by the AIFF after a COVID-19 outbreak hit the participating teams inside the bio-bubble in Kolkata.
It was learnt at that time that a total of 45 COVID-19 cases had hit the league which prompted the AIFF to suspend the league for at least six weeks. All the players and officials had left the bio-bubble after that.