AFCON Qualifiers Suspended By CAF Due To Coronavirus

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) have announced they have postponed Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in March because of coronavirus outbreak.

The announcement came on Friday after over twenty member associations told CAF that they are opposed to staging the third and fourth round of qualifiers from 25 to 31^st March, as scheduled.

“Following the growing concern of the COVID-19 virus and the latest declaration of the World Health Organization (WHO) describing it as a pandemic, CAF emergency committee has decided to postpone Total AFCON 2021 Qualifiers, match days 3 and 4 initially scheduled from 25^th to 31^st March,” reads part of the statement.

Consequently, CAF has decided to maintain the schedule for Africa Nations Championship (CHAN) that is due to start at the beginning of next month in Cameroon.

Ducor Sports understands that a three-man delegation this week to Cameroon to assess the Central African nation’s preventative measures taken by the Local Organizing Committee.

The inspection visit by the CAF medical committee is scheduled for March 14 and 15, 2020 in Cameroon

Fears about the spread of the disease have prompted several forthcoming sporting events to either be cancelled, postponed or played behind closed doors.

FIFA has called off its Congress scheduled for Addis Ababa in June while several football competitions across the globe have been suspended while others are being played behind closed doors.

There are now over 126,000 cases of COVID-19 spread across 114 countries. The disease has already claimed over 4,613 lives.