The 8th final Champions League return between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid, played in front of 52,000 people on March 11 in England despite the threat of coronavirus, "could be linked to the death of 41 people", according to a British study published Sunday. These deaths would have occurred in hospitals near Liverpool between 25 and 35 days later, said this study based on data from health authorities in the United Kingdom and quoted by the weekly The Sunday Times.
Around 3,000 Madrid supporters then traveled to Liverpool to attend the match, the last to be played before the stopping of sports competitions in this country. According to Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, Spain had around 640,000 cases of coronavirus at the time, compared to 100,000 in the United Kingdom.
Last month, the Labor mayor of the metropolis of Liverpool had already asked to investigate the role that the match could play in the spread of the coronavirus in his city. About 3,000 Spanish supporters had come to watch the match on March 11 when the La Liga, the Spanish professional football league, had decreed the previous day that the Spanish league matches should be held behind closed doors.
"There were hot spots where the virus was present and Madrid was one of them"
"If people got the coronavirus from a sporting event that shouldn't have happened, well, it's outrageous," Steve Rotheram told the BBC. “It is necessary to investigate in order to know if some of these contaminations are linked to Atlético supporters. There were hot spots where the virus was present and Madrid was one of them, ”he added.
The next day, a Liverpool fan who had not gone to Anfield had publicly expressed concern. This supporter was none other than Professor John Ashton, a former director of public health in the city, as reported by the Liverpool Echo. "There is Madrid, where they play matches behind closed doors, and here there are 3,000 supporters in town who stay in Liverpool and drink in bars," he said. "And part of them will be positive for coronavirus, (and) we will now have people infected in Liverpool because of this - the government must pull together and stop treating the public like children," he said. local television, throwing a paving stone into the pond.
Another Champions League round of 16 is suspected of having played a role in the explosion of the number of cases of coronavirus in Europe: the match Bergamo-Valencia, disputed on February 19 in Milan, capital of Lombardy, Italian region hardest hit by the pandemic. The representative of Italy to the World Health Organization (WHO), Walter Ricciardi, described the meeting as "accelerator of the spread of the virus".
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In addition, the decision to allow 250,000 people to attend the major horse races in Cheltenham (south-west England) in mid-March is also linked to 37 additional deaths, according to the study published in the Sunday Times. The organizers claim to have put in place special hygiene measures and to have followed the recommendations of the British government, which then authorized the holding of major sporting events.