Solo Nqweni contracts COVID-19

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CRICKET in South Africa came face to face with COVID-19 on Thursday when Warriors seamer Solo Nqweni revealed that he had tested positive for the disease that has plunged the world into lockdown.

Ill health has dogged the 26-year-old, who in July was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare and potentially fatal auto-immune condition that weakens muscles and damages the peripheral nervous system. At the time he was playing in Scotland, where he was put into an induced coma for four weeks and spent five months in intensive care before returning home in January. South Africa’s men’s team pledged the equivalent of USD3,300 towards his care and rehabilitation, and £76,875 came from an anonymous donor.

But the news wasn’t as uplifting as that on Thursday, when Nqweni tweeted: “So last year I got GBS, and have been battling this disease for the past 10 months and I’m only half way through my recovery. I got TB, my liver failed and my kidney failed. Now today I tested positive for corona virus. I don’t understand why all of this is happening to me.”

Nqweni has taken 60 wickets in 36 first-class matches. He played eight under-19 one-day games for South Africa, three of them at the 2012 under-19 World Cup.

His agent, Rob Humphries, confirmed he was recovering at home.

First published by Cricbuzz.