Angus Ng Ka-long has again tested positive for Covid-19, and this time it was when he arrived at Hong Kong International Airport over the weekend. The city’s top badminton player has repeatedly tested positive for the virus over the past several weeks, including last Thursday, a result that was expected to have stopped him leaving Switzerland where he has been stuck. Ng though travelled to the airport in Basel anyway, and got a negative test before flying home. That relief was short-lived however, when he again failed a test on arrival on Saturday. Aside from the frustration of not being fully recovered, Ng’s isolation in a government quarantine facility has put his chances of playing at the Asian Championships later this month in doubt. “I am feeling OK here and I don’t need any medical support,” Ng said. “Everything is normal except that I have a little bit of coughing at the moment.” The world No 11 first tested positive after his second-round exit at the All England Open in mid-March, forcing him to withdraw from the Swiss Open the following week, and a second positive result tested in Basel arrived the day before his flight to Hong Kong. Badminton star Ng tests positive for Covid, compares it to Will Smith slap Ng frustrations after his latest test boiled over in an Instagram post where called the result “a bolt from the blue”. “I did my PCR test at the airport and waited for 4 to 5 hours, watching my teammates leave one by one, but I haven’t received my report yet,” he wrote. “One of the airport staff came to me and told me my result was inconclusive, it was between negative and positive. After another two hours, I finally received the report that it was positive.” To be allowed to leave isolation, Ng must be negative on the sixth and the seventh day, but even if he does get out after a week, the Hongkonger is not sure he will be fit enough to play in the Asian Championships, which take place in Manila between April 26 and May 1. “I have to see how my training is when I am back at the Hong Kong Sports Institute before deciding to compete or not,” he said. Tim He Yiming, the Hong Kong head coach, revealed that a number of Hong Kong’s second string team had contracted Covid-19 in Europe, including Yeung Pui-lam who claimed her second women’s doubles title in Poland last week. “With many European countries adopting a live-with-Covid attitude, players are easy to catch the easy-spreading Omicron variant,” he said. “So far, our players recovered within a week or 10 to 12 days, and no post-Covid side effects were reported.” The coach hopes Ng recovers quickly and can return to the Sports Institute to train in time for the Asian Championships. Ron Lee Chung-man, the institute’s director of community relations and marketing, said that as long as Ng complied with the HKSI’s Covid-19 regulations, he would be welcome to train once he had been discharged. In response to Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong, the institute is only open to full-time elite athletes, coaches and relevant staff. Under this closed-camp approach, people inside the premises, including full-time athletes, have to undergo two PCR-based nucleic acid test every week, while Ng will have to test negative twice before being allowed in.