The The Austrian government has urged the tennis player Dominic Thiem, number nine in the world, to be immunized now against COVID-19, after the athlete has expressed his intention to wait for a new type of vaccine to be available. “I can only urge Dominic Thiem to get vaccinated,” said the Minister of Health, Wolfgang Mückstein, in an interview with the station Puls4, in which he recalled that athletes also suffer the effects of prolonged COVID and that in the intensive care units there are young people.
Thiem recently assured that his intention is to wait for the use of Novavax, a vaccine still in development and that uses a different technology than the messenger RNA or viral vector technology currently used in the European Union, to be approved. “I am not yet vaccinated. In fact, I want to wait for the Novavax vaccine because my doctor has told me that it is supposed to be very good,” said the athlete.. However, Thiem clarified that he is open to using any other drug if that vaccine is not ready in time to meet the obligation to be fully immunized to participate in the Australian Open next January. About, Mückstein assured that Novavax will not be available until 2022 and that, in addition, “there is no indication that it has any advantage over current vaccines”.
While, It has been known that 65% of the ATP circuit tennis players have already been vaccinated, just over two months after the Australian Open begins, which requires the complete guideline in the protagonists to avoid two-week quarantines. According to a leaked ATP document, to which ‘Tennismajors’ has had access, the figures place tennis behind other competitions, like the Premier League, which already has 68% of the players with both doses, or American sports like the NFL, where the percentage is higher than 90%. The ATP affects the letter on the need for tennis players to be vaccinated since, although the organization does not contemplate that it is something mandatory to play, something that tennis players like Novak Djokovic have already opposed, is the decision of each country and government entry laws. The same goes for airlines.