England manager Gareth Southgate believes the country is getting close to the point where players and staff teams could receive Covid-19 vaccinations to enable this summer’s European Championships to go ahead safely.
Southgate stressed that his opinion could change if the vaccination program is slowed by recently reported supply problems, but argued that athletes are putting themselves at risk of catching the virus by doing their jobs and deserve a level of protection once the most vulnerable are vaccinated.
“The situation changes so quickly,” Southgate said. “I was thinking ahead of the last few days our vaccination program has been incredible, we’ve reached 25 million people and I think nearly all the vulnerable people have had the first vaccine and my view would’ve been we’re getting close to the point where it would be acceptable for professional sportspeople to be on that list.
“We are asking them to keep playing. We are asking them to quarantine when they come back from certain situations. They’re having to take some risks going back to families. A lot of them have caught the virus because they’ve been working.
“I wasn’t in any way suggesting they should’ve been ahead of any key workers and there are teachers and people that should be ahead, but I think we’re getting close to that point where that would be acceptable.”
He added: “That might be thrown up in the air by this bump we’ve hit on supply, so that view’s got to be measured in terms of being responsible to the bigger picture.
“We’re moving to the stage where we’re asking athletes to put themselves in situations where they’re more likely to catch the virus than others and I think we have a bit of responsibility to them as well.”
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3r4G3Zo
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