One player tested positive on Covid19 at the FIDE World Cup 2021
When the round 2 of the FIDE World Cup 2021 started today, it looked like everything will go smoothly. At the start of the round, the reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen received the 2020 Fair Play Svetozar Gligoric award from the hands of FIDE Vice President Mahir Mammedov.
However, after 10 minutes of play, the observers and fans started to worry about Levon Aronian as all the broadcast platforms showed the 1:0 result in favor of Aronian’s opponent Cheng Bobby (Australia 2552).
Shortly after, FIDE announced on the Official Twitter account that Aronian forfeited the first game as he showed symptoms of fever a few days ago.
Read more: Aronian forfeits the 1st game at the FIDE World Cup
Not long after, another surprising result appeared as Megaranto Susanto resigned against Fabiano Caruana in a not-so-clear position. News quickly started to spread altogether with information that Susanto Megaranto (Indonesia 2550) was tested positive for Covid19 and got a result during the game. He was obliged to resign the game and to leave the playing venue.
FIDE confirmed that one player was tested positive on covid19:
In another announcement coming during the day, FIDE emphasized that the player who has been forced to forfeit the game had been tested several times during the event and before his trip to Sochi. The last test was taken before the start of the Round 2 but the result of the test was late, coming when the game had already started.
Although FIDE did not announce the name of the player who was tested positive due to privacy regulations, players and other platforms named Susanto Megaranto. Hoping for the best, Fabiano Caruana wished him a fast recovery and explained that he will be tested to determine if he was exposed to the covid19 virus.