Ref. No. 2020/127
February 27, 2020

World Taekwondo Statement on the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Dearest Colleagues,

On behalf of World Taekwondo, I am writing to you regarding the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its potential impact on future taekwondo events.

As you know, the health and safety of all our stakeholders, including athletes, officials and fans, is of paramount importance to WT. We are therefore monitoring the situation around COVID-19 very closely.

We strongly recommend that you all stay in close contact with your respective health ministries and visit the WHO website to ensure you have the very latest information.

Under this circumstance, should WT determine that any WT-Promoted or Recognized events need to be postponed or cancelled to protect the wellbeing of our stakeholders, we will alert you as soon as possible. You are kindly advised to check the WT Event Calendar posted on www.worldtaekwondo.org/calendar/ on a regular basis.

 

Coronavirus: Asian Olympic Qualification Tournament suspended in China

 

WT encourages the promoters and organizers of international taekwondo competitions in countries where the COVID-19 outbreak is deemed to be significant to consider reallocating the event to another city or country or postponing the event until the COVID-19 situation has improved.

In addition, WT kindly asks officials and athletes to minimize non-essential travel to, and from, countries where there is a substantial outbreak of COVID-19. If any of your athletes or officials is unwell or suspect they have been exposed to affected individuals, they should not travel to events and should seek local medical advice.

Please also consider minimizing physical meetings in large groups through maximizing the use of conference calls.

Finally, WT would like to express our gratitude to all the public health officials and authorities, medical professionals and volunteers, and scientists in the world who are leading the fight against COVID-19 in the frontline. We also express our sympathies and best wishes to those who have been affected.

WT will continue to work closely with all of you to ensure that together we minimize the risk of spreading the virus while minimizing the disruption to our event calendar.

Sincerely yours,

Chungwon Choue
President