Rugby in the time of Covid-19

At the risk of adding to the mass of Covid related news, we wanted to provide a quick update on Lesotho Rugby Academy’s response to the pandemic.

 As of 2 April 2020, Lesotho remains one of only 18 countries with no officially reported cases of Covid-19. Although this may partly reflect a lack of testing capacity, it is nonetheless reassuring to know that the pandemic hasn’t got a foothold in Lesotho. South Africa moved early and aggressively to lockdown movement and this will undoubtedly have helped protect Lesotho, which also closed down schools in the last week of March and moved to full lockdown from 30 March. If and when it does, the combination of a high HIV rate and low capacity in the healthcare system could be devastating.

In the early stages of the global pandemic the Lesotho Rugby Academy put on hold its usual syllabus and focused its messaging on the importance of handwashing (with some great tips from Dolen Cymru) to prevent the spread of the virus. However, with the schools closed our programme has gone on hiatus.

Unfortunately, Lesotho does not have the public funding available to replicate programmes of income support we are seeing in Europe and the USA. As such, following an emergency trustees meeting, Lesotho Rugby Academy has confirmed that it will continue to pay salaries to all our team, including our volunteer coaches who were paid on a day rate. LRA believes it has an obligation to look after our staff during this time and ensure they are not torn between adhering to the lockdown and leaving to try and find replacement income. We trust all of our sponsors will agree with this decision.

 We look forward to restarting our programmes in the near future.