Dota 2 teams have been preparing all year for The International 10 for Dota 2, including early arrivals in Bucharest to bootcamp before the event and adjust to the differences in time zone, climate, and cuisine. However, a nightmare scenario has begun for one team competing at this year’s International 10 as three players, a staffer, and a coach from Team Aster have contracted COVID-19 during their stay in Bucharest, according to the team’s Weibo account. 

According to a screenshot of Team Aster’s Weibo announcement posted to the Dota 2 subreddit, three of Team Aster’s players are now ill with COVID-19. The infection has spread to their coach Mad and another Team Aster staffer, who was the initial contact for the infection. All infected Team Aster players and personnel are currently isolating to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

Other Chinese teams at the event were also tested for the presence of COVID-19. As of this writing, teams Invictus Gaming, Vici Gaming, Elephant, and their associated personnel have tested negative and are taking precautions to prevent future infection, according to a post on the news section of Chinese Dota 2 site Maxjia. 

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Chinese team Invictus Gaming recently posted on Twitter that their offlaner JT has tested positive for COVID-19. JT will remain isolated as the second round of testing will commence in the morning for the rest of the team. 

LanM, one of Aster’s players and a long-time veteran of Chinese Dota 2, expressed his frustration with how this situation was being handled. According to tweets posted by Tiffani’ Oling’ Lim, a translator at The International 10 for Dota 2, LanM felt disappointed with PGL staff who had not provided prior testing, food/water for teams, or additional hotel rooms to individually isolated infected Team Aster personnel when the team petitioned PGL for assistance. Seeing as how PGL was organizing The International 10 and asked non-western teams to arrive early for the TI10 bootcamp, LanM feels that the PGL organizers should have provided more support for teams outside of just providing a bootcamp and been more responsible overall.

Team Secret’s CEO John Yao took to Reddit to provide his take on the events. “It’s 100% the decision and responsibility of the orgs to bootcamp in Romania, or not (I don’t believe all TI teams are bootcamping in Bucharest itself actually), so this time is completely team-led, not Valve-led. PGL / Valve have bent over backwards to help teams out, upon request, with their bootcamps here (while simultaneously planning for TI itself). If teams need accommodations, PCs, whatever it is, they have given operational support where ever they can (again upon request). However, it’s not Valve’s responsibility to order food and water to an org’s bootcamp. It’s on us to manage our own bootcamps.”

COVID-19 cases in Romania have been spiking over the past few days. According to data provided by the World Health Organization, the daily cases of COVID-19 in Romania have been spiking upward since mid-August. The number of daily confirmed cases for Romania has spiked to over 11,000 active cases on September 28, representing a 95.28% daily increase. Bloomberg reports that Bucharest plans to institute new restrictions in the phase of increasing cases.