As Euro 2020 draws to a close and bigger crowds flock to the games, there are growing concerns that games will become super-spread events as the delta variant of the coronavirus fuels a spike in infections across Europe.
With vaccination advancing rapidly across the continent and people eagerly awaiting the holiday season, it is tempting to see large crowds at European Championship games and urban gatherings as a sign that life is getting back to normal.
However, there are particular concerns about the upcoming games in London and Saint Petersburg, two cities particularly hard hit by the Delta variant.
READ | EURO 2020: Italy enforces 5-day quarantine for England fans
“If we want to spread the Delta variant across Europe, then this is the right way,” the epidemiologist Antoine Flahault told AFP.
Friday’s quarter-finals between Spain and Switzerland will take place in Saint Petersburg, despite Russia grappling with a surge in virus cases and recording daily deaths.
Both the semi-finals and the final will be played in London, with more than 60,000 fans attending the games at Wembley Stadium.
The Delta variant has also been on a steep upward curve in the UK, but that didn’t stop authorities from easing restrictions on England’s round of 16 win over Germany on Tuesday.
Nearly 42,000 fans were at the 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium to watch the game and the images of maskless English fans wildly celebrating victory caused some dismay.
In England there is growing excitement that the national team could win the European Championship in front of their own fans.
However, Flahault believes that the matches scheduled for Wembley should be postponed.
“It wouldn’t have been very difficult to move these games to cities where the risk isn’t that great,” said Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva.
Games are not postponed
However, UEFA has no plans to postpone matches.
The European Football Association told AFP that “all remaining games will take place as planned according to the schedule”.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization warned that new coronavirus cases across Europe had risen by 10 percent in the past week after a previously long and steady decline.
And WHO acknowledged its fears that attendance at Euro 2020 – which will be held in 11 countries for the first time – could help, saying the host cities need to do more to monitor the movement of spectators outside the stadiums.
There were no capacity restrictions in Hungary’s capital Budapest, so that the host country’s game against France reached a tournament high of almost 56,000 spectators. PHOTO: AP – AP
“How do people get there? Do they drive in large, overcrowded bus convoys? Are they taking individual action?” Asked Catherine Smallwood, Senior Emergency Officer at the WHO European Office.
“What we do know is that large crowds associated with increased transmission can act as amplifiers in relation to transmission,” she added.
“Not a new big wave”
Most of the games in the tournament, which was postponed from the previous year due to the pandemic, were played in front of a severely limited audience.
In Hungary’s capital Budapest, however, there were no capacity restrictions, so that the host country’s game against France reached a tournament high of almost 56,000 spectators.
READ | EURO 2020: Spain face lively Switzerland to reach semi-finals
The Danish authorities reported that three fans were infected with the Delta variant during their team’s game against Belgium in Copenhagen and asked 4,000 other fans to get tested.
Finland’s health authority reported nearly 100 cases among fans who had traveled across the border to attend their team’s game against Russia in Saint Petersburg.
Public Health Scotland said nearly 2,000 cases have been linked to people watching games, two-thirds of which were people who had traveled to London for Scotland’s game against England.
“It cannot be completely ruled out that events and gatherings could ultimately lead to some local increase in the number of cases, but this would apply not only to football matches, but also to all kinds of situations that are now allowed under the easing measures.” decided by the relevant local authorities, “said Dr. Daniel Koch, UEFA medical advisor for the competition.
“The intensive vaccination campaigns that have been rolled out Europe-wide and the border controls will help prevent a new big wave from starting in Europe and putting the respective health systems under pressure, as was the case with the previous waves of infections.”
Flahault, meanwhile, believes fans shouldn’t consider attending games in London or St Petersburg if they aren’t vaccinated, and encouraged those who do not to congregate in bars and restaurants or on public transport push
The post UEFA EURO 2020 Cup: From London to St. Petersburg, the euro is fueling fear of a new spread of the virus first appeared on Daily Florida Press.
from Daily Florida Press https://dailyfloridapress.com/uefa-euro-2020-cup-from-london-to-st-petersburg-the-euro-is-fueling-fear-of-a-new-spread-of-the-virus/
No comments:
Post a Comment