FIFA President Gianni Infantino (TASS photo)
MOSCOW – The world’s governing football body, FIFA, announced on Tuesday that President Gianni Infantino was tested positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
"FIFA President Gianni Infantino has received confirmation today that he has tested positive for coronavirus," according to a statement from FIFA’s press office.
FIFA said the 50-year-old Swiss-Italian executive has mild symptoms and “has immediately placed himself in self-isolation and will remain in quarantine at least for 10 days.”
"All people who came into contact with the FIFA President during the last few days have been informed accordingly and they are being requested to take the necessary steps," according to the statement. "FIFA sincerely wishes President Infantino a speedy recovery.”
Infantino was elected FIFA president in February 2016 at the FIFA Extraordinary Congress in Paris. In June 2019, he was reelected for another four-year presidential term.
Born in Switzerland, Infantino is fluent in French, Italian and German and also speaks English, Spanish and Arabic.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus or Covid-19 have been reported in every corner of the globe.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.
According to the latest statistics, over 43,959,120 people have been infected worldwide and more than 1,166,940 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 32,288,700 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe. (TASS)
