Despite the alarming covid-19 propagation, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has decided to maintain the schedule of all its competitions, including the African Nations Championship (Chan) which is set to take place in Cameroon from April 4 to 25 this year.

“A delegation from the Caf Medical Committee is scheduled to visit Cameroon from 14-15 March. The purpose of this mission is to assess all the preventive measures taken by the Local Organizing Committee,” the Confederation said in a March 11 statement.

“According to the World Health Organization, no African country to date has been declared high risk,” Caf said, stressing that it is following up the evolution of the virus across the world and particularly in Africa where 12 nations are already touched with 117 cases and 2 deaths.

In Cameroon, authorities reassure that everything is being set up to guarantee the safety of players, delegations, and supporters throughout the competition. “Cocan 20-21 (the local committee in charge of the chan 2020 and AfCON 2021, ed), in collaboration with the public health ministry, is taking all adequate measures to safeguard the health of all participants in Chan, in particular concerning the prevention against coronavirus,” said Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, Head of the local committee.

These measures align with the covid-19 response plan initiated by the government of Cameroon. “We are constantly in contact with the caf to test the efficiency of our response mechanism regarding this pandemic,” the Cameroonian minister of sports said.

In addition to Cameroon which confirmed two cases, five other countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Togo, Burkina Faso, and DR Congo) out of the 16 qualified for the Championship are also affected by the virus.

Patricia Ngo Ngouem