Mohammad Hafeez has tested negative in a private test for Covid-19, a day after a PCB test result showed up as positive. On Tuesday, Hafeez was announced as one of ten Pakistan players in total who tested positive for the virus after testing carried out on the entire 29-man squad due to fly out to England on June 28.
Hafeez, however, conducted a private test at a different lab in Lahore for a "second opinion" for him and his family. That result, he said in a tweet, was negative for him and his family.
Hafeez had his second test done by the Chugtai Laboratory, whereas all the PCB's tests were conducted by Shaukat Khanum Laboratory.
After Tested positive COVID-19 acc to PCB testing Report yesterday,as 2nd opinion & for satisfaction I personally went to Test it again along with my family and here I along with my all family members are reported Negetive Alham du Lillah. May Allah keep us all safe pic.twitter.com/qy0QgUvte0
— Mohammad Hafeez (@MHafeez22) June 24, 2020
In practice, Hafeez's new result has no impact as of yet on the PCB's travel schedule for its players. All players in the squad are in any case due to undergo a further round of testing before the team's scheduled departure on Sunday. The players whose results were negative in the first round will all undergo second tests in Lahore on June 25 in a bio-secure environment at the hotel they are in. The players who tested positive, including Hafeez, are not with the rest of the squad - having been told by the board to isolate at home - but were also always scheduled to undergo another round of testing overseen by the PCB but from their own residences.
Those tests would have happened on June 25 or 26 and a negative test for any of the players (who previously tested positive) would have meant one more test within 48 hours. Only if the results of that last test was also negative would the player be then cleared to travel, with two negative tests out of three. The final make-up of the squad, as Wasim Khan, the PCB's chief executive, had pointed out, would only be known on June 27, a day before travel.
It is not clear whether Hafeez had informed the board that he was getting himself tested privately, or whether, in effectively breaking ranks, the matter now becomes a disciplinary issue.