A single soccer team is responsible for every case of the Omicron coronavirus variant in Portugal
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Sam Cooper
Nov 30, 2021, 19:28 IST
The club said 44 players and staff were now self-isolating.Gualter Fatia/Getty Images
13 people in Portugal have tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
The cases are all in top division soccer team Belenenses, and can be traced back to a South African player.
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A Portuguese soccer team is the sole cause of the presence of the Omicron variant of coronavirus in the country.
Belenenses, which plays in the country's top division, the Primeira Liga, reported that 13 of staff members have tested positive for the variant first detected in South Africa last week.
An outbreak started when the club's South African defender Cafu Thete returned from international duty in his home country on November 17, Reuters reports.
While there, Thete did not play in either of South Africa's matches against Ghana and Zimbabwe, but did contract coronavirus. It was later discovered that he had contracted the Omicron variant of coronavirus, which was then passed on to 12 people at Belenenses, including some players and some staff.
The BBC reports that this accounts for the entirety of Omicron case numbers in Portugal.
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Belenenses' coronavirus outbreak made headlines over the weekend, before it was made public that the team had cases of the Omicron variant, when the team was forced to abandon its game against Benfica in a farcical manner on Saturday.
The club began the match with just nine men on the pitch due to its COVID outbreak. With 17 players unavailable, Belenenses was forced to field a goalkeeper, Joao Monteiro, as a defender.
In the second half and trailing 7-0, the team was further reduced to six men due to injuries. At this point, the game had to be abandoned as soccer rules dictate that no team can have fewer than seven players on the pitch.
The club told Reuters that 44 players and staff were now self-isolating as a result of the outbreak.
Both Benfica and Belenenses criticized the league and the Directorate-General for Health for failing to call the game off. However, the league said it did not receive a formal request to postpone the match and the health authorities said it was not up to them to postpone the game according to the BBC.
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