Safety of international professional sports competitions during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Association Football experience

Caniza, H. (Horacio); Forriol, F. (Francisco); Pangrazio, O. (Osvaldo); Gil-Conesa, M. (Mario)

Authors:

Caniza, H. (Horacio)
Forriol, F. (Francisco)
Pangrazio, O. (Osvaldo)
Gil-Conesa, M. (Mario)

Keywords:

Área de Medicina Clínica y Epidemiología

Issue Date:

2022

Publisher Version:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36167919/

ISSN:

0112-1642

Note:

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Citation:

Caniza, H.; Forriol, F.; Pangrazio, O.; et al. "Safety of international professional sports competitions during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Association Football experience". SPORTS MEDICINE. 53 (4), 2022, 765 - 768

Abstract

Major sporting events were suspended during the most acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Competitions are resuming with enhanced hygiene protocols and altered mechanics. While risks for players and staff have been studied, the impact of large-scale tournaments on the communities that host them remains largely unstudied. CONMEBOL Copa America is one of the first wide-scale international tournaments to be conducted in its original format since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament saw 10 national teams compete in four Brazilian cities during a period of heightened viral transmission. The analysis of over 28,000 compulsory PCR tests showed that positive cases did not lead to the uncontrolled spread of the disease among staff and players. More importantly, the data indicate that locally hired staff were not exposed to increased risk while working. The Copa America experience shows that international sporting competitions can be conducted safely even under unfavourable epidemiological situations.

URI:

https://hdl.handle.net/10171/66016

DOI:

10.1007/s40279-022-01763-3

Appears in Collections:

DA - Medicina - MPSP -Artículos de revista

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