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COVID-19 Infection among Elite Football Players: A Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study

Little is known about the risk of COVID-19 infection among footballers. We aimed to investigate the incidence and characteristics of COVID-19 infection among footballers. In total, 480 football players of Super League Greece and 420 staff members participated in a prospective cohort study, which too...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Papagiannis, Dimitrios, Laios, Theodoros, Tryposkiadis, Konstantinos, Kouriotis, Konstantinos, Roussis, Xenophon, Basdekis, Georgios, Boudouris, Panagiotis, Cholevas, Christos, Karakitsios, Stergios, Kakavas, Pindaros, Kiriakidis, Theoharis, Kouloumentas, Panagiotis, Kouvidis, Georgios, Manoudis, Grigoris, Nikolaou, Pantelis, Theos, Christos, Piskopakis, Andreas-Nikolaos, Rallis, Ioannis, Ristanis, Stavros, Toliopoulos, Alexandros, Zisis, Grigoris, Theodorakis, Yiannis, Gourgoulianis, Konstantinos I., Rachiotis, Georgios
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9144666/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35632390
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10050634
Descripción
Sumario:Little is known about the risk of COVID-19 infection among footballers. We aimed to investigate the incidence and characteristics of COVID-19 infection among footballers. In total, 480 football players of Super League Greece and 420 staff members participated in a prospective cohort study, which took place from May 2020 to May 2021. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from footballers and staff members weekly. All samples (n = 43,975) collected were tested using the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for the detection of “SARS-CoV-2”. In total, 190 positive cases (130 among professional football players and 60 among staff) were recorded. Out of the 190 cases that turned positive, 64 (34%) cases were considered as symptomatic, and 126 (66%) cases were asymptomatic. The incidence rate of a positive test result for footballers was 0.57% (confidence interval (CI) 0.48–0.68%) and for staff members it was 0.27% (CI 0.20%, 0.34%), respectively. Footballers recorded a twofold increased risk of COVID-19 infection in comparison to staff members (relative risk = 2.16; 95% CI = 1.59–2.93; p-value < 0.001). No significant transmission events were observed during the follow-up period. We found a low incidence of COVID-19 infection among professional footballers over a long follow-up period. Furthermore, the implementation of a weekly diagnostic testing (RT-PCR) was critical to break the transmission chain of COVID-19, especially among asymptomatic football players and staff members.