Dhaka, Dec 11 (IANS): Two members of the Bangladesh women's cricket team tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19 after returning home from Zimbabwe, the country's health and family welfare minister Zahid Maleque said on Saturday.

"It will take time to recover and according to protocol we will keep them under watch for two weeks and they will be released after recovering fully," Cricbuzz quoted Maleque as saying.

"We are doing contact tracing and testing everyone who has come close to them," he added.

Notably, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on December 6 had extended the national women's team isolation after the two members had tested positive for COVID-19 after returning home from Zimbabwe.

The team had gone to Zimbabwe to participate in the ICC Women's World Cup 2022 qualifiers, which was cancelled midway due to the outbreak of Omicron.

Upon their return, the members of the women's team had to go through the quarantine after the Bangladesh government imposed new rules on travellers coming from the African nation, where several cases of Omicron variant of the Covid-19 had been detected.

Meanwhile, BCB's women's wing chairman Nadel Chowdhury has said that the women's team, which was earlier expected to leave the team hotel on December 6, after completing their mandatory five-day quarantine will now have to complete a 14-day quarantine.