Cargando…
Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action
The COVID-19 pandemic is a potential threat to professional sporting events when they eventually return to their usual calendar with spectators’ capacity of football stadiums usually exceeding 40,000 seats for important events. Hence, a strategy for safe return to sporting events is needed in the CO...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Institute of Sport in Warsaw
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8670791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34937978 http://dx.doi.org/10.5114/biolsport.2021.103568 |
_version_ | 1784615034431733760 |
---|---|
author | Dergaa, Ismail Varma, Amit Tabben, Montassar Malik, Rubena Ali Sheik, Sanaulla Vedasalam, Sakthikumar Abbassi, Ahmed Khellil Almulla, Jassim Chaabane, Mokhtar Chamari, Karim |
author_facet | Dergaa, Ismail Varma, Amit Tabben, Montassar Malik, Rubena Ali Sheik, Sanaulla Vedasalam, Sakthikumar Abbassi, Ahmed Khellil Almulla, Jassim Chaabane, Mokhtar Chamari, Karim |
author_sort | Dergaa, Ismail |
collection | PubMed |
description | The COVID-19 pandemic is a potential threat to professional sporting events when they eventually return to their usual calendar with spectators’ capacity of football stadiums usually exceeding 40,000 seats for important events. Hence, a strategy for safe return to sporting events is needed in the COVID-19 pandemic to pave the way towards a new normalcy. We reviewed the guidelines and policies implemented in organising the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar, which hosted about 20,000 fans. The authors evaluated the publicly available information on the official websites of the various organizations involved and highlight the importance and usefulness of the Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Assay-Kit as a tool for screening sports spectators as well as the importance of a rigorous spectator pathway, including their accurate traceability thanks to a specific mobile phone application. Despite the surging of COVID-19 all over the world, a big football event with around 20,000 spectators in the same stadium has been hosted under strongly controlled preventative measures. These preventative measures show that it is possible to organize a major football match held outdoors, with the presence of thousands of supporters. This article is a call for action for the organisers of such events where the supporters’ health status is traceable to provide the scientific community with actual data of post-event infection rates. Therefore, it is suggested to consider using procedures like the ones described in the present article as a potential model in the process of organizing big sporting events with spectators in times of COVID-19. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8670791 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Institute of Sport in Warsaw |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86707912021-12-21 Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action Dergaa, Ismail Varma, Amit Tabben, Montassar Malik, Rubena Ali Sheik, Sanaulla Vedasalam, Sakthikumar Abbassi, Ahmed Khellil Almulla, Jassim Chaabane, Mokhtar Chamari, Karim Biol Sport Original Paper The COVID-19 pandemic is a potential threat to professional sporting events when they eventually return to their usual calendar with spectators’ capacity of football stadiums usually exceeding 40,000 seats for important events. Hence, a strategy for safe return to sporting events is needed in the COVID-19 pandemic to pave the way towards a new normalcy. We reviewed the guidelines and policies implemented in organising the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar, which hosted about 20,000 fans. The authors evaluated the publicly available information on the official websites of the various organizations involved and highlight the importance and usefulness of the Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Assay-Kit as a tool for screening sports spectators as well as the importance of a rigorous spectator pathway, including their accurate traceability thanks to a specific mobile phone application. Despite the surging of COVID-19 all over the world, a big football event with around 20,000 spectators in the same stadium has been hosted under strongly controlled preventative measures. These preventative measures show that it is possible to organize a major football match held outdoors, with the presence of thousands of supporters. This article is a call for action for the organisers of such events where the supporters’ health status is traceable to provide the scientific community with actual data of post-event infection rates. Therefore, it is suggested to consider using procedures like the ones described in the present article as a potential model in the process of organizing big sporting events with spectators in times of COVID-19. Institute of Sport in Warsaw 2021-02-28 2021-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8670791/ /pubmed/34937978 http://dx.doi.org/10.5114/biolsport.2021.103568 Text en Copyright © Biology of Sport 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Dergaa, Ismail Varma, Amit Tabben, Montassar Malik, Rubena Ali Sheik, Sanaulla Vedasalam, Sakthikumar Abbassi, Ahmed Khellil Almulla, Jassim Chaabane, Mokhtar Chamari, Karim Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title | Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title_full | Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title_fullStr | Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title_full_unstemmed | Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title_short | Organising football matches with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the Amir Cup Football Final of Qatar 2020? A call for action |
title_sort | organising football matches with spectators during the covid-19 pandemic: what can we learn from the amir cup football final of qatar 2020? a call for action |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8670791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34937978 http://dx.doi.org/10.5114/biolsport.2021.103568 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT dergaaismail organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT varmaamit organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT tabbenmontassar organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT malikrubenaali organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT sheiksanaulla organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT vedasalamsakthikumar organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT abbassiahmedkhellil organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT almullajassim organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT chaabanemokhtar organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction AT chamarikarim organisingfootballmatcheswithspectatorsduringthecovid19pandemicwhatcanwelearnfromtheamircupfootballfinalofqatar2020acallforaction |