World Curling Championship 2022: Covid-hit Scotland open with two defeats
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Gina Aitken is standing in for skip Rebecca Morrison
Covid-hit Scotland suffered defeats to Switzerland and the Czech Republic at the Women's World Curling Championship.
With skip Rebecca Morrison and alternate Fay Henderson out with coronavirus, Scotland had just three players and lost 12-1 to the defending champions Switzerland.
The trio followed that up with a narrow 10-9 defeat by the Czechs after losing two in the last end.
Scotland face Denmark in their third match in Canada on Monday at 02:00 GMT.
Emergency replacement Beth Farmer is flying out to join Gina Aitken, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson to take Scotland back up to four players.
"Obviously Covid has not been kind to us and there has been a lot of tough changes to make to our line-up and our roles within the team," said stand-in skip Aitken after the heavy defeat by the Swiss.
Scotland struggled early on against the Czech Republic, falling 5-0 and then 7-3 behind before scores of three in the seventh and ninth end had them 9-8 in front heading into the last.
But the Czechs capitalised on having the hammer in the 10th end to score two and claim a narrow win.
The 13 teams will play each other once in a round-robin format in Prince George with the top two sides going straight to the semi-finals and teams ranked third to sixth entering play-offs for the other two last-four spots.
Morrison's rink were chosen to represent Scotland at the tournament instead of Eve Muirhead's Olympic champions after they won the Scottish championships last month.