Impact of the Euro 2020 championship on the spread of COVID-19

Dehning, Jonas; Mohr, Sebastian B.; Contreras, Sebastián; Dönges, Philipp; Iftekhar, Emil N.; Schulz, O.; Bechtle, P.; Priesemann, Viola

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-35512-x

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…An increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations starts towards the end of the group stages, peaking at the beginning of the quarter final stage of the tournament. Such an increase may support [ 19 ], who found that there was little effect on COVID-19 transmission associated with a nation hosting a UEFA 2020 match, but speculated that hosting an entire tournament such as FIFA 2022 could increase COVID-19 transmission. The increase in cases and hospitalisations is then followed by a decline, most probably reflecting less interest from certain fan-bases as their national side drops out of the tournament.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…The 2022 FIFA World Cup hosted in Qatar was the first multi-continental sporting MGE of the post COVID-19 era to allow foreign spectators [15][16][17]. Denhing et al (2023) and Subedi et al (2022) [18,19] highlighted the potential for disease spread at the world cup. Therefore, we chose to use the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a test case of the framework we developed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Grunnill,

Arino,

McCarthy

et al. 2024

PLoS Comput Biol

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The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the first major multi-continental sporting Mass Gathering Event (MGE) of the post COVID-19 era to allow foreign spectators. Such large-scale MGEs can potentially lead to outbreaks of infectious disease and contribute to the global dissemination of such pathogens. Here we adapt previous work and create a generalisable model framework for assessing the use of disease control strategies at such events, in terms of reducing infections and hospitalisations. This framework utilises a combination of meta-populations based on clusters of people and their vaccination status, Ordinary Differential Equation integration between fixed time events, and Latin Hypercube sampling. We use the FIFA 2022 World Cup as a case study for this framework (modelling each match as independent 7 day MGEs). Pre-travel screenings of visitors were found to have little effect in reducing COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations. With pre-match screenings of spectators and match staff being more effective. Rapid Antigen (RA) screenings 0.5 days before match day performed similarly to RT-PCR screenings 1.5 days before match day. Combinations of pre-travel and pre-match testing led to improvements. However, a policy of ensuring that all visitors had a COVID-19 vaccination (second or booster dose) within a few months before departure proved to be much more efficacious. The State of Qatar abandoned all COVID-19 related travel testing and vaccination requirements over the period of the World Cup. Our work suggests that the State of Qatar may have been correct in abandoning the pre-travel testing of visitors. However, there was a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations within Qatar over the World Cup. Given our findings and the spike in cases, we suggest a policy requiring visitors to have had a recent COVID-19 vaccination should have been in place to reduce cases and hospitalisations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Grunnill,

Arino,

McCarthy

et al. 2024

PLoS Comput Biol

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“…Our Bayesian model simulates the spread of each variant separately using a discrete renewal process 50 – 53 . In our model, COVID-19 spreads with an inferred time-dependent effective reproduction number 54 , where the contribution of each variant to is modulated by a time-invariant factor .…”

Section: Methods Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early mutational signatures and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 Gamma and Lambda variants in Chile

Oróstica,

Mohr,

Dehning

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

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Genomic surveillance (GS) programmes were crucial in identifying and quantifying the mutating patterns of SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this work, we develop a Bayesian framework to quantify the relative transmissibility of different variants tailored for regions with limited GS. We use it to study the relative transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 variants in Chile. Among the 3443 SARS-CoV-2 genomes collected between January and June 2021, where sampling was designed to be representative, the Gamma (P.1), Lambda (C.37), Alpha (B.1.1.7), B.1.1.348, and B.1.1 lineages were predominant. We found that Lambda and Gamma variants’ reproduction numbers were 5% (95% CI: [1%, 14%]) and 16% (95% CI: [11%, 21%]) larger than Alpha’s, respectively. Besides, we observed a systematic mutation enrichment in the Spike gene for all circulating variants, which strongly correlated with variants’ transmissibility during the studied period (r = 0.93, p-value = 0.025). We also characterised the mutational signatures of local samples and their evolution over time and with the progress of vaccination, comparing them with those of samples collected in other regions worldwide. Altogether, our work provides a reliable method for quantifying variant transmissibility under subsampling and emphasises the importance of continuous genomic surveillance.

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“…(2023) and Subedi et al . (2022) (18; 19) highlighted the potential for disease spread at the world cup. Therefore, we chose to use the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a test case of the framework we developed, assessing various strategies to mitigate COVID-19 spread through match attendee testing and visitor vaccination requirements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Disease Mitigation at Mass Gatherings: A Case Study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Grunnill

Arino

McCarthy

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the first major multi-continental sporting Mass Gathering Event (MGE) of the post COVID-19 era to allow foreign spectators. Such large-scale MGEs can potentially lead to outbreaks of infectious disease and contribute to the global dissemination of such pathogens. Here we adapt previous work and create a generalisable model framework for assessing the use of disease control strategies at such events, in terms of reducing infections and hospitalisations. This framework utilises a combination of meta-populations based on clusters of people and their vaccination status, Ordinary Differential Equation integration between fixed time events, and Latin Hypercube sampling. We use the FIFA 2022 World Cup as a case study for this framework. Pre-travel screenings of visitors were found to have little effect in reducing COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations. With pre-match screenings of spectators and match staff being more effective. Rapid Antigen (RA) screenings 0.5 days before match day outperformed RT-PCR screenings 1.5 days before match day. A combination of pre-travel RT-PCR and pre-match RA testing proved to be the most successful screening-based regime. However, a policy of ensuring that all visitors had a COVID-19 vaccination (second or booster dose) within a few months before departure proved to be much more efficacious. The State of Qatar abandoned all COVID-19 related travel testing and vaccination requirements over the period of the World Cup. Our work suggests that the State of Qatar may have been correct in abandoning the pre-travel testing of visitors. However, there was a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations within Qatar over the World Cup. The research outlined here suggests a policy requiring visitors to have had a recent COVID-19 vaccination may have prevented the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations during the world cup.

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Impact of the Euro 2020 championship on the spread of COVID-19

Cited by 8 publications

References 60 publications

Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Modelling disease mitigation at mass gatherings: A case study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Early mutational signatures and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 Gamma and Lambda variants in Chile

Modelling Disease Mitigation at Mass Gatherings: A Case Study of COVID-19 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup

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