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Performing tests to detect the coronavirus that the League plans to carry out next week worries the players. The Association of Spanish Soccer Players (AFE) today sent two new briefs, after those sent on April 22, to the Ministry of Health, Consumption and Social Welfare and to the Higher Sports Council (CSD), showing their uncertainty about the suitability of these controls. In these statements, the body chaired by David Aganzo again conveys the concern of the First and Second Division footballers about returning to training and carrying out diagnoses, understanding that this decision must be taken by the Government.

AFE explains that "it rejects, in this sense of responsibility with our society, any type of stigmatization when the matter in question affects public health, recalling that other championships and competitions of other categories of soccer, of both sexes, of those that are not spoken. "

AFE stresses that the footballers have stated in the meetings they have had with this union that they consider that there are other groups that are more in need of them than carrying out tests and access to other medical equipment at this time. "Our association," they emphasize, "is fully committed to our society, and therefore poses a simple question to the Ministry and the CSD:" Can you tell us if the clubs are authorized to carry out tests before returning to activity at this time? And if so, "can you tell us the authorizations for this purpose?".

The union also recalls that the Government has limited the performance of diagnostic tests for the detection of COVID-19 to those cases in which there is a prior prescription by a physician and that they comply with "criteria established by the competent health authority".

The AFE insists: "Any entity of public or private nature that, in relation to the diagnostic tests for the detection of COVID-19, purchases swabs for sampling, virus transport medium, inactivation reagents, extraction kits for nucleic acids or PCR reactions, or rapid diagnostic tests, must be reported to the competent health authority of the autonomous community in which they are located and / or provide their services, with express indication of the type of material, number of units purchased and destination of use ".

The legal security of those affected

Also remember that the autonomous communities will transfer to the Ministry of Health, when required, the information referred to in this section that they request. "Once this information has been received, the Ministry of Health may adopt, as appropriate, the appropriate measures in response to criteria of necessity and urgency, with the aim of guaranteeing the principles of equity and cohesion," he adds.

In relation to the state of alarm, the AFE asks the administration to rule on legal certainty for those affected in this case. Due to the sense of co-responsibility that soccer players have always expressed in a matter of which they are aware, it produces controversy in a society whose pandemic has caused thousands of victims. Public health is not a matter of some, nor of others, but of the whole of society. "As workers, the soccer players will comply with the prescriptions that from the occupational risks are indicated to them by the clubs. And from AFE it is absolutely necessary that the government clarify this issue of the tests," concludes the players' union.

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