(Reuters) – This year’s World Team Table Tennis Championships in Chengdu, China has been pushed back to the end of September from its April dates due the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) said on Friday.
The new dates for the championships will be Sept. 30- Oct. 9, the world governing body said in a statement.
“Given the continued spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant and following close consultation with the Chinese Table Tennis Association and the City of Chengdu authorities, all parties have agreed that holding the World Championships in Autumn was the best course of action,” the ITTF said.
The last edition of the tournament, which included men’s and women’s team events, in 2020 in Busan was pushed back multiple times before being cancelled due to the pandemic.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
