Epidemiologists believe that the plans developed by the major European leagues to resume their activities in the coming weeks suffer from many weaknesses, gaps that may expose players to infection with the Corona virus, and threaten to stop the games again after a short period of resumption.
The Spanish newspaper "Albais" reported that the protocols laid down by the major European leagues to resume competitions face difficult challenges. Therefore, scientists and officials of the German and Italian governments are still waging an intense debate on this issue with the club's governing councils, which has hindered the appointment of a date for the return of the activity.
Questions were raised about how to play matches in light of the continued spread of the Corona virus, and would the organizers have to cancel everything if cases of HIV infection appeared in a team? How can we guarantee the safety of the participants and not destroy the football sector, which in Spain, for example, represents 1.37% of GDP. Especially since it is difficult to conduct tests to detect infection with the Corona virus continuously and quickly to trap the infection if it appears.
And Fernando Rodriguez, director of the Preventive Medicine Department at the University of Madrid points out a major problem, which is that Spain is able to do 50,000 rapid tests a day, and that number is hardly sufficient to examine all people who show symptoms of the disease. Therefore, allocating part of the tests to healthy players presents a great legal and moral problem.
According to the Spanish newspaper’s report, even when taking tests for all twenty League teams, by taking samples from between 50 and 80 players, once every three days, over a period of one and a half months required to finish the league, it will not be It is possible to ensure that the results are truly guarantor, as there is no infection between the players. On Friday, in Cologne, Germany, three members of the Cologne team were found to have contracted the virus after the exercises resumed, which added to the fear and confusion.
Although experts who advise German Chancellor Angela Merkel have demanded the removal of the entire Cologne, League League protocols only stipulate the injury of injured players, which is not guaranteed the consequences, because the rest of the players can show infection after a full week. Therefore, it is assumed that it waits 15 days before the players resume the activity.
Given that matches will take place every three days, infection can spread even between teams without being detected initially, as in the first days of infection the test results are usually negative. This is what happened in the NBA competitions, when one of the players was infected with the virus, the league activity was suspended, and after a while it was proven that his teammates were infected.
That is why Rodriguez says team games such as football make respect for social divergences impossible. It is not like tennis, and the Coruna virus is not Ebola or the flu that has been studied and fully understood.
And within a short period of the resumption of the matches, some problems that we do not know anything about at the moment can appear. The use of rapid detection tests is still a new technology, and its margin of error is large. Therefore, it is better for the European leagues to plan from now on to make the schedules of matches flexible, taking into account the possibility that one of the teams will be forced to stop the activity for a week.