Buenos Aires (AFP) – Argentina’s 1986 World Cup winning coach Carlos Bilardo was diagnosed with COVID-19 by mistake, his brother said Sunday.
“My brother has nothing, the very famous lab was wrong, it’s to kill them, almost certainly he’s going back to the same place,” Jorge Bilardo wrote on Twitter.
The 82-year-old had been hospitalized Saturday after testing positive for the coronavirus the day before, despite being asymptomatic.
Bilardo suffers from a brain disorder and lives in a nursing home where 10 other occupants have tested positive for COVID-19.
According to his brother, once he is discharged, he will likely return to the same facility, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro.
Bilardo was hospitalized earlier Sunday at the private Argentina Institute of Diagnosis, which did not release a report on his health status.
He had already undergone a COVID-19 test a few weeks ago that came back negative.
Bilardo was admitted to intensive care in July 2019 with Hakim-Adams syndrome.
He managed the national side from 1982 to 1990, winning the World Cup in Mexico with Diego Maradona and then guiding the defending champions to the 1990 final in Italy. He is also a doctor.
Geriatric hospitals have been major hotspots for contagion since the start of the pandemic. Argentina has so far recorded 1,233 deaths out of 59,920 cases of infection.
More than 90 percent of the infections are clustered in and around the capital city.
President Alberto Fernandez announced on Friday a toughening of lockdown measures in the capital Buenos Aires and its surrounding area with cases on the rise.
