CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – West In­dies play­ers and sup­port staff cur­rent­ly en­dur­ing man­aged iso­la­tion for the COVID-19 virus on the Tour of New Zealand have been giv­en a clean bill of health, crick­et of­fi­cials in the coun­try have an­nounced.

New Zealand Crick­et, the gov­ern­ing body for the sport in the coun­try, said in a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day that the third and fi­nal round of COVID-19 tests, which the play­ers took this week, have all re­turned neg­a­tive for the virus.

This will come as a great re­lief to the play­ers and sup­port staff be­cause it will al­low them greater free­dom of move­ment to train and pre­pare for their se­ries of three Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als and two Tests against the Black Caps, and the abil­i­ty to freely leave the iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty and mix with the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

The out­come of the tests have come in­to sharp fo­cus, af­ter New Zealand health of­fi­cials pre­vent­ed the Windies from train­ing on Wednes­day be­cause mem­bers of the squad had “con­tra­vened” strict COVID-19 man­aged iso­la­tion pro­to­cols.

There was no in­di­ca­tion that any of the mem­bers of the squad left or had con­tact with any­one out­side of the man­aged iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty in which they had been con­fined since ar­riv­ing in the coun­try al­most two weeks ago.

But New Zealand health of­fi­cials said the team had been giv­en cer­tain ex­emp­tions from the strict rules of man­aged iso­la­tion in place in the coun­try and they had vi­o­lat­ed them.

The play­ers and sup­port staff are sched­uled to leave the man­aged iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty to­day and trav­el to the south­ern is­land city of Queen­stown, where they will play a three-day match and a four-day match against New Zealand “A” at John Davies Oval.

Nine oth­er Windies play­ers that took part in the In­di­an Pre­mier League, in­clud­ing Test cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er and Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard, ar­rived in Auck­land on Wednes­day from Dubai.

NZC said they have all passed ini­tial health checks and pro­cess­ing and were cleared to board a char­ter flight to Christchurch ahead of be­gin­ning a 14-day pe­ri­od of man­aged iso­la­tion.

The nine play­ers will end their pe­ri­od of man­aged iso­la­tion one day be­fore the Windies meet the Black Caps in the first T20I on No­vem­ber 27 at Eden Park in Auck­land.

Tour Match Sched­ule:

No­vem­ber 20-22: vs New Zealand “A” at Queen­stown

No­vem­ber 26-29: vs New Zealand “A” at Queen­stown

No­vem­ber 27: 1st T20I at Eden Park, Auck­land

No­vem­ber 29: 2nd T20I at Bay Oval, Mount Maun­ganui

No­vem­ber 30: 3rd T20I at Bay Oval, Mount Maun­ganui

De­cem­ber 3-7: 1st Test at Sed­don Park, Hamil­ton

De­cem­ber 11-15: 2nd Test at Basin Re­serve, Welling­ton

(CMC)