Coronavirus: LPGA cancels HSBC Women’s World Championship 2020 in Singapore
SINGAPORE — The HSBC Women’s World Championship 2020 has been cancelled less than three weeks ahead of its scheduled start due to host Singapore’s raising of its disease outbreak level to “orange”.
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), the American organiser for the event, said in a press release on Monday (10 February) that the tournament, originally scheduled from 27 February to 1 March, was cancelled based on the Ministry of Health’s elevation of the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) level.
The annual golf tournament at Sentosa Golf Club would have featured the top 20 women's golfers, including world No. 1 Ko Jin Young, No. 2 and defending champion Park Sung Kyun as well as No. 3 Nelly Korda.
Managing Director of Golf Events at event partner IMG, Grant Slack, thanked all those involved for their “hard work” and added that the health and safety of players, spectators, and event personnel was of the “highest priority” in their decision.
Apart from Singapore, the LPGA also cancelled the 2020 Honda LPGA Thailand, slated to take place in Pattaya, Thailand, from 20 to 23 February.
Said the LGPA of the cancellations, “It is always a difficult decision to cancel events and the LPGA greatly appreciates the understanding and all the efforts made by our title sponsors (Honda and HSBC) as well as IMG to host incredible events for our players.
It added, “While we are disappointed that these tournaments will not take place this season, we look forward to returning to Asia soon.”
Disease considered severe
The Singapore government on Friday raised the Dorscon level to “orange” from “yellow” amid an increase in the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
Under the “orange” level, a disease is considered to be severe and spreads easily from person to person, but the disease has not spread widely in Singapore and is contained. Singapore was also at a similar alert level during the SARS epidemic in 2003.
There are currently 43 cases of the virus in Singapore, after three new cases, involving two Singaporeans and one Bangladeshi, were confirmed on Sunday. All three have no known links to previous cases or recent travel history to China.
The total number of locally transmitted cases now stands at 22.
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