Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva’s nightmare in the Australian Open bubble continues after mice invade her hotel room for the second time.
This comes just days after the World No 28 was moved to a different room, during her time in hard quarantine, after she spotted a rodent in the original room she had been allotted at the hotel.
“Different room same story. Wanted to go to sleep but nooooope!” she Tweeted in the early hours of Wednesday, along with a video she took of the mice in her new room.
“It’s actually a lot of them! Not even 1 in my room now,” she added, along with a second video.
Different room same story🤦🏼♀️ wanted to go to sleep but noooope! pic.twitter.com/REZu1LqDMv
— Yulia Putintseva (@PutintsevaYulia) January 19, 2021
The 26-year-old is among the 72 players who have been forced to enter a 14-day hard quarantine period since she was a passenger on one of the three chartered flights to Melbourne that had a traveller test positive for the virus when they landed.
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Tennis Australia and the Victorian Government had made a concession for the players travelling for the Australian Open to be allowed a five-hour per day window in which they could leave their hotel rooms to train and practice.
This luxury however does not apply to the players who were on board the three affected flights.
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Players have subsequently complained about the strict quarantine, and food provided to them, but Putintseva had an unexpected problem with the intruder in her room.
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On Sunday, she had put up a video on social media of the rodent in her first room, claiming, “been trying to change the room for a 2 hours already! And no one came to help due to the quarantine situation.”
Been trying to change the room for a 2 hours already ! And no one came to help due to quarantine situation🤦🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/LAowgWqw58
— Yulia Putintseva (@PutintsevaYulia) January 16, 2021
She’s again tried to get her room changed because of the infestation in her second room, but that attempt has not been fruitful.
“Cool now the reception told me the hotel is full and that they cant help. Its a joke” she added.
Meanwhile, Lisa Neville, a Victoria Government minister overseeing the quarantine facilities claimed some of the players had been feeding the mice.
“As I understand there may have been some feeding going on,” she said to The Age.
“We did firstly move the particular tennis player the other day.
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“Every tennis player needs to clean their room and change their own beds if they want that.
“We will keep doing pest control if we need to, but hopefully that pest control work that was done this week will have fixed the problem.”
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At the moment, Puntintseva is the only player who has complained about this problem on social media. But she asserts she’s not the only one to have faced it.
“I think there is a lot! Some players told me that they saw it too” she added.
