The Government has been urged to share Covid infection data from the Euro 2020 final immediately after swathes of England fans who attended tested positive for the virus.
Fans who caught the virus at the game have dubbed it the ‘Wembley variant’, with one member of the England Supporters Travel club telling i last week that “pretty much everybody caught” Covid who was at the game and the suggestion only hundreds got it at the match would be “conservative”.
More than 60,000 attended the final but it descended into chaos when thousands more ticketless fans congregated outside before the game with many of them storming the stadium and bypassing supposed Covid status checks.
A 75 per cent attendance was allowed at the Euros semi-finals and final as part of a Government trial to test the safety of large events. It was part of the third phase of what it has described as its ‘world-leading Events Research Programme’, which also included last weekend’s Open Championship and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which 140,000 attended. This weekend’s Latitude Festival is also part of the pilot.
The first phase in May, which included the Brit Awards and the FA Cup semis and final, only recorded 28 Covid cases over nine events but the Government acknowledged there was a low uptake of post event PCR tests and community prevalence was also low at the time. Results for the second and third phase are still to be released.
The Government declined to comment when asked if it had any idea how many people might have been infected or subsequently told to isolate after the Euro 2020 final and whether it might be in the thousands.
A Government source said: “These are very different events to the first phase, which were much smaller scale. The final events of the Events Research Programme is just in the process of being wrapped up in the next few days. Data is still coming through and continuing to be accumulated.
“Obviously there was lot of people in and around Wembley who didn’t have tickets and wouldn’t have followed entry requirements as well. It will be a different sort of interpretation of the event because obviously the rules were not necessarily all followed it’s fair to say.”
Professor John Ashton, former regional director of public health in the North West of England, told i any data the Government has from the final should be released immediately after it turned into what looked like a “super-spreading” event.
He thinks fans have a right to know how safe it is to go to games with the start of the Premier League season three weeks away and stadiums expected to be full.
He said: “This brings back memories of Cheltenham last year and the Athletico Madrid game at Anfield (before the first lockdown). It didn’t feel like a controlled event.
“Looking at the match on television it looked almost full. I think 5,000 (an estimate of how many broke in) is an underestimate. It’s totally reckless to embark on the new season as though it’s ok.
“It is a basic right to know how safe it is for people to go these things, and if that’s withheld from us, people can’t make informed decisions.
“The Government should release that information so people can make their own minds up. There is also the overall public health aspects, the continuing circulation and spread of the virus and the potential for another new variant to turn up.”
Professor Ashton, who has worked at Southampton University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was initially impressed with the first phase of research but thinks it has moved too quickly to large crowds amid a fast growing infection rate.
He said: “It started off well, I thought those first events were very well structured and thought through, but I think they’ve used the apparent success of those early events just to let the breaks off.
“The Government has lost the plot on all of this.”
Asked when stadiums should be full again, he said: “I think the earliest that it’s possible to ease off is when everybody’s had both vaccines”, adding he thinks currently 20 per cent should be the maximum allowed inside.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3hUm3aq
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