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Kunlun Red Star to play remainder of KHL season in Russia due to coronavirus outbreak

By Donya Abramo

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January 26, 2020 3:37 pm

The Kunlun Red Star will play the remainder of their KHL season in Russia due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to goaltending coach Dusty Imoo.

Kunlun were scheduled to play two more of their regular season games in Beijing, one on February 2 against CSKA Moscow and another on February 24 against Dinamo Riga. The February 2 game had already been postponed due to the celebration of the Chinese New Year from January 25 to February 2. Both games will now be played at a to-be-determined location in Russia.

The KHL have been closely monitoring the coronavirus outbreak and made a statement on January 23 that they were considering a change of venue, which appears to have been confirmed by Imoo on Sunday.

That statement was posted to AllHockey.ru. According to Google translate, it said:

The League is concerned about the situation in the PRC due to the spread of coronavirus. The Kunlun Red Star club has two home matches for the KHL regular season left. On December 16, the league postponed the match with CSKA on February 2, 2020, to Moscow due to a government order China on the impossibility of holding mass sporting events in the country during the celebration of the Chinese New Year from January 25 to February 2, 2020.

After receiving further clarification on the situation, the KHL will decide on the venue for the home game with Dinamo Riga on February 24. If the club gets into the playoffs, this issue will be considered additionally.

Per the host of The Faceoff, Gillian Kemmerer, the likely location for Kunlun’s final home game of the season will be Novosibirsk. The February 2 game against CSKA Moscow has yet to be rescheduled.

Since the first confirmed case on December 31, the coronavirus — temporarily named 2019-nCoV — in Wuhan, China, there have been 2,019 confirmed cases worldwide, and 56 deaths. A third U.S. case was confirmed in Orange County, California, on Sunday, with the first two located in Illinois and Washington state.

“Coronavirus is a family of viruses, affecting mammals, birds, and fish. In humans, different types of coronavirus tend to cause respiratory infections, up to and including pneumonia,” doctor and RMNB Crasher Lindsey Clarke told us. “It is speculated that it has been transferred to humans from fish, but fish are not believed to have been the originating species. The concern with this latest coronavirus is not the transmission between species, but the fact that it’s been transmitted between humans.

“Currently, it’s not known how severe it is. Part of the reason for this is that the true number of people infected has not been established, as those who’ve experienced mild cold-like symptoms are not likely to have reported them. While the current mortality rate is in the region of 3% (the seasonal flu has a mortality rate of about 1%), this is an estimate based on very low and very early numbers.

As with most viruses, those most at risk are the very young, the very old and the immunosuppressed. Like MERS and SARS before it, it is likely that this new coronavirus will create a serious strain on local resources and while its spread beyond China is inevitable, currently the only people to have been infected have been those who’ve traveled to Wuhan.”

Headline photo: @KRSchina

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