The coronavirus epidemic in France "accelerated" by Juventus fans, who came to 3,000 to support their team on February 26 in the last game of Champions in Lyon, before the suspension of the matches: this is the thesis of the French doctor Marcel Garrigou- Grandchamp, author of an article published by the online site of the doctors of France.
The thesis, however, according to the Regional Health Agency, is not proven by monitoring in the match area in the 14 days following the presence of Italian fans. According to Garrigou-Grandchamp, to his warnings on the imminent arrival of Juventus fans, the authorities replied that "Turin is not Lombardy". "But it is nonsense - the doctor observes - it is known that the Turin club has fans all over Italy, and also outside. So much so that 2 weeks later, there was a real explosion of Covid-19 cases in the region of the Rhone ".
"On the morning of the match - wrote the doctor from Lyon - I wrote an email to the Minister of Health Olivier Veran, asking for the match to be postponed due to the risk of propagation of the Covid-19 that was raging in Lombardy".
Garrigou-Granchamp illustrates his piece by publishing the contagion curve in the Lyon region, the Rhône-Alpes, today 5th department of France with the largest number of hospitalized people: 1,138. And he adds: "The same situation occurred in Italy with the Atalanta-Valencia match", which was - he says - "a biological bomb".
For the regional health agency, quoted by the newspaper L'Equipe, there are no "clear links" between the Lyon-Juventus match and the spread of the epidemic: "In the 14 days that followed the match on 26 February - is the position of the Health Authority - the investigations conducted individually for each of the biologically confirmed cases of Covid-19 did not reveal cases in connection with the consignment ".
