Counties with NFL stadiums experienced spikes of covid-19 after full football games in season one during the pandemic, according to a new study, as researchers better perceive how to avoid mass-market events, even as cases decline nationally two years later.
Researchers from University College London and Texas A
These spikes occurred about two to three weeks after the games, according to the study published Friday morning in JAMA, the researchers found “very little evidence” of spikes after initial data collection seven days later.
The researchers, who analyzed coronavirus numbers using the New York Times’ Covid database in the 2020-2021 season, before the widespread rollout of vaccines, found no evidence of county-level Covid spikes after games with fewer than 5,000 attendees.
Large events, the researchers urged, “should be treated with excessive caution at public fitness events where vaccines, on-site testing and countermeasures are not available to the public. “
31,700. That’s the number of enthusiasts who attended a Dallas Cowboys midseason game, the highest attendance of any NFL game in the 2020-2021 season (the Cowboys averaged 90,929 enthusiasts consistent with the game in the 2019-2020 season, according to ESPN). Other teams, such as the Baltimore Ravens, New Orleans Saints and Arizona Cardinals, have kept their presence below 5,000 in line with the game. The game with the fewest attendance this season had only 748 enthusiasts in the crowd.
The NFL was the first major American sports league to announce plans to play a full season in 2020, with games beginning in September of that year, six months after the World Health Organization said Covid-19 was a pandemic. . Twenty of the league’s 32 groups allowed fans to attend, with varying degrees of crowd control, in accordance with local regulations and NFL protocols, which also included team tryouts and player tag tracing. Array The league was able to keep infection levels among players low, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Faced with the prospect of a crippling profit shortage without price ticket sales, NFL teams have tried to find a compromise, with distancing protocols that separate fans in the stands and mask needs in position games. So far, research on the spread of Covid among fans during those matches has been mixed. In all, there were 117 games with fans and 152 without. Stadiums were able to control the spread with masking and distancing needs, as stadiums remained well below full capacity, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.
The researchers of the JAMA study warned that they oppose blaming exclusively NFL games or the large crowds that have shown up in front of them for covid spikes in counties where the games were played and in neighboring counties. Variations in local covid policies and rules at the time may also influence the spread of the virus, the researchers said.
Study: With masking and distancing in place, NFL stadium openings in 2020 did not affect local Covid-19 infections (MIT News)
The benefit of the stadium will be lost by each and every NFL team if the games are played without fans (Forbes)
How the NFL weathered a pandemic and hit the line of a historic season (NFL)
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