"I have already been vaccinated" says Dominic Thiem confirming Australian Open participation

The announcement came on Twitter and in it Thiem also confirmed that he has been vaccinated which means he will participate at the Australian Open as well. The Austrian has been one of the players that was not rushing with getting vaccinated announcing a month ago that he will be getting the vaccine once the Novavax one is available.

Due to the delay of that vaccine, Thiem then explained that he was willing to take another one in order to safely return to the competition and now he announced that he has done it. He wrote:

“I’ll be returning to competition in December and will be playing the MWTC 2021 in Abu Dhabi – with the objective to return to the tour for the 2022 Australian Open. Needless to say that the vaccine is needed to play both events, and in my case I have already been vaccinated. I saw recently some news about this and I had made it very clear that I would get vaccinated. Hopefully the next time things won’t be taken this far.”

The decision to get vaccinated is a recent one for Thiem as he was barred from entering the Vienna Open last week due to not being vaccinated. In the same statement Thiem also touched upon his recovery saying:

“I am very happy to announce that my recovery is going well. The MRI I did today showed that my wrist injury has improved significantly. A couple of weeks ago I started playing with soft balls and was able to switch to normal tennis balls during yesterday’s practice session.”