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Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol

Background: Elite professional sports events involving mass gatherings carry a high risk of viral transmission during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We describe the potential impact of resuming professional football leagues involving international participants adhering to a str...

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Autores principales: Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab, Ahmad Khan, Naushad, Abdurahiman, Sameer, Asim, Mohammad, El-Menyar, Ayman, Penney, Gordon, Al-Thani, Hassan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: HBKU Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9405165/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36035766
http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2022.31
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author Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab
Ahmad Khan, Naushad
Abdurahiman, Sameer
Asim, Mohammad
El-Menyar, Ayman
Penney, Gordon
Al-Thani, Hassan
author_facet Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab
Ahmad Khan, Naushad
Abdurahiman, Sameer
Asim, Mohammad
El-Menyar, Ayman
Penney, Gordon
Al-Thani, Hassan
author_sort Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab
collection PubMed
description Background: Elite professional sports events involving mass gatherings carry a high risk of viral transmission during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We describe the potential impact of resuming professional football leagues involving international participants adhering to a strict Bio-secure bubble protocol and investigate the consequences of spectators/fan attendance at such mass events during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar. Methods: We conducted a descriptive cohort study involving football players, referees, match officials, local organizing committee (LOC) members, hotel and security staff working in close coordination, and over 10,000 spectators from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (East) and the final match. The study covered almost four weeks of the event (November 19 to December 19, 2020) under a robust Bio-secure bubble protocol. It included extensive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) every 3–6 days and clinical symptom monitoring on and off the field. Target variables included positive RT-PCR results and clinical symptom monitoring among participants, and rapid antigen testing for fan attendance to examine their safe return to the stadiums. Results: A total of 12,250 RT-PCR tests involving 3158 individuals in the Bio-secure bubble were done over one month for all the AFC (East) matches, including the final match. Overall, 44 matches involving 16 teams were played. During the championship, only five individuals (three LOC members and two match officials) returned positive for COVID-19 infections. Four individuals (three team staff/officials and one person outside the Bio-secure bubble) had reactive results. None of the players tested positive for COVID-19 infection. All individuals testing positive were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, with no one requiring hospitalization other than symptomatic treatment. The overall positivity rate was 0.15% for the entire duration of the AFC (East) Champions League. For the final match, a total of 10,320 rapid antigen tests were done for spectators, of which only one test was positive for COVID-19. Conclusions: This report shows a very low incidence rate of COVID-19 infections during mass gathering events at the international level. For the resumption of football with spectators, careful mitigation strategies should be considered to reduce the risk of transmission to a sufficiently safe level. This may require proper coordination and measures (i.e., physical distancing, testing, entry, and exit routes in the stadium, and seating arrangement inside the stadium with limited attendance). Based on this, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the supervised and controlled resumption of football matches with spectators can be done safely provided that a strict Bio-secure bubble protocol has been implemented.
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spelling pubmed-94051652022-08-26 Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab Ahmad Khan, Naushad Abdurahiman, Sameer Asim, Mohammad El-Menyar, Ayman Penney, Gordon Al-Thani, Hassan Qatar Med J Research Paper Background: Elite professional sports events involving mass gatherings carry a high risk of viral transmission during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We describe the potential impact of resuming professional football leagues involving international participants adhering to a strict Bio-secure bubble protocol and investigate the consequences of spectators/fan attendance at such mass events during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar. Methods: We conducted a descriptive cohort study involving football players, referees, match officials, local organizing committee (LOC) members, hotel and security staff working in close coordination, and over 10,000 spectators from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (East) and the final match. The study covered almost four weeks of the event (November 19 to December 19, 2020) under a robust Bio-secure bubble protocol. It included extensive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) every 3–6 days and clinical symptom monitoring on and off the field. Target variables included positive RT-PCR results and clinical symptom monitoring among participants, and rapid antigen testing for fan attendance to examine their safe return to the stadiums. Results: A total of 12,250 RT-PCR tests involving 3158 individuals in the Bio-secure bubble were done over one month for all the AFC (East) matches, including the final match. Overall, 44 matches involving 16 teams were played. During the championship, only five individuals (three LOC members and two match officials) returned positive for COVID-19 infections. Four individuals (three team staff/officials and one person outside the Bio-secure bubble) had reactive results. None of the players tested positive for COVID-19 infection. All individuals testing positive were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, with no one requiring hospitalization other than symptomatic treatment. The overall positivity rate was 0.15% for the entire duration of the AFC (East) Champions League. For the final match, a total of 10,320 rapid antigen tests were done for spectators, of which only one test was positive for COVID-19. Conclusions: This report shows a very low incidence rate of COVID-19 infections during mass gathering events at the international level. For the resumption of football with spectators, careful mitigation strategies should be considered to reduce the risk of transmission to a sufficiently safe level. This may require proper coordination and measures (i.e., physical distancing, testing, entry, and exit routes in the stadium, and seating arrangement inside the stadium with limited attendance). Based on this, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the supervised and controlled resumption of football matches with spectators can be done safely provided that a strict Bio-secure bubble protocol has been implemented. HBKU Press 2022-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9405165/ /pubmed/36035766 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2022.31 Text en © 2022 Al Musleh, Khan, Abdurahiman, Asim, El-Menyar, Penney, Al-Thani, licensee HBKU Press. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Paper
Al Musleh, Abdul Wahab
Ahmad Khan, Naushad
Abdurahiman, Sameer
Asim, Mohammad
El-Menyar, Ayman
Penney, Gordon
Al-Thani, Hassan
Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title_full Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title_fullStr Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title_full_unstemmed Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title_short Resumption of professional football league with spectators during the COVID-19 pandemic: The implementation of Bio-secure bubble protocol
title_sort resumption of professional football league with spectators during the covid-19 pandemic: the implementation of bio-secure bubble protocol
topic Research Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9405165/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36035766
http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2022.31
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