Xherdan Shaqiri is today travelling with the Swiss national squad to face Spain in Madrid, despite testing positive for Covid-19 a few days ago.
The Liverpool player took a test when arriving at the Swiss camp on Monday, and on Tuesday this came back positive. Blick report a subsequent blood test showed it to be a negative-positive, due to ‘fragments of an old infection’.
Blick believe the likeliest scenario is that Shaqiri had Covid-19 much earlier this year, with them saying potentially January or February, and that’s why it hasn’t been picked on subsequent tests with Liverpool.
The Swiss FA is quoted as saying: “In this regard, the SFV received the information that Shaqiri’s positive test result is probably due to a previous infection and that he is therefore not infectious. This resulted from an additional blood test carried out with reliable detection of antibodies.”
Still, he needed to get approval to travel to Madrid, and it would appear that didn’t take long to arrive. Blick now report Shaqiri will take a flight with his national teammates at 5pm on Thursday.
It’s good news for the player and he’ll hope he can get a chance for some minutes, with Jurgen Klopp not giving him time at Liverpool right now.