After the CL duel Bergamo against Valencia in mid-February, the number of corona infections in northern Italy explodes. Experts suspect a fatal effect of the game.
The corona pandemic is raging particularly badly in Europe, especially in Italy. In the region around Bergamo in the north of the country alone, there were about 400 deaths from the virus last week.
In the search for reasons for this, the Champions League round of 16 between Atalanta Bergamo and FC Valencia on 19 February will play a decisive role.
Experts in Italy suspect that of all things this football festival with sensational team Atalanta (later even reached the quarter finals) was a fatal accelerator in the corona crisis. The crisis team of the national civil defence is investigating this theory.
One speaks of the “Partita zero” (the game zero) or “Stadio zero”. The game (4:1 for Bergamo) was played in Milan’s Giuseppe Meazza Stadium with 44,236 spectators.
“I think this game contributed to the current dramatic situation,” said Atalanta striker Papu Gomez, who told of the mass rush of fans in the trains from Bergamo to Milan at the time. “It took my wife three hours to complete the distance – it normally takes only 40 minutes.”
Gomez, despite Atalanta’s passage to the quarter-finals, would have preferred not to play the two duels against Valencia in retrospect. “The fact that we spread the virus is terrible.
Crowds near Bergamo against Valencia in Milan
The crowds of people who not only made the pilgrimage from Bergamo to Milan, 50 kilometers away, but also met in squares, in the subways and last but not least in the stadium in a very confined space – all of this may have accelerated the epidemic massively, experts believe.
Virologist Massimo Galli, senior physician at Milan’s Sacco hospital, explained: “The epidemic had probably already broken out in the countryside a few weeks before and was much bigger than we thought, in the factories, at agricultural fairs and in the bars of the villages. But the fact that people from the same corner of the country were crowding into the stadium in their tens of thousands could have been a major factor in the spread”.
A virologist from Rome suspects that the collective cheering at Bergamo’s gala caused so much mucus and saliva to be in the air that many visitors could be infected.After the CL duel Bergamo against Valencia in mid-February, the number of corona infections in northern Italy explodes. Experts suspect a fatal effect of the game.
The corona pandemic is raging particularly badly in Europe, especially in Italy. In the region around Bergamo in the north of the country alone, there were about 400 deaths from the virus last week.
In the search for reasons for this, the Champions League round of 16 between Atalanta Bergamo and FC Valencia on 19 February will play a decisive role.
Experts in Italy suspect that of all things this football festival with sensational team Atalanta (later even reached the quarter finals) was a fatal accelerator in the corona crisis. The crisis team of the national civil defence is investigating this theory.
One speaks of the “Partita zero” (the game zero) or “Stadio zero”. The game (4:1 for Bergamo) was played in Milan’s Giuseppe Meazza Stadium with 44,236 spectators.
“I think this game contributed to the current dramatic situation,” said Atalanta striker Papu Gomez, who told of the mass rush of fans in the trains from Bergamo to Milan at the time. “It took my wife three hours to complete the distance – it normally takes only 40 minutes.”
Gomez, despite Atalanta’s passage to the quarter-finals, would have preferred not to play the two duels against Valencia in retrospect. “The fact that we spread the virus is terrible.
Crowds near Bergamo against Valencia in Milan
The crowds of people who not only made the pilgrimage from Bergamo to Milan, 50 kilometers away, but also met in squares, in the subways and last but not least in the stadium in a very confined space – all of this may have accelerated the epidemic massively, experts believe.
Virologist Massimo Galli, senior physician at Milan’s Sacco hospital, explained: “The epidemic had probably already broken out in the countryside a few weeks before and was much bigger than we thought, in the factories, at agricultural fairs and in the bars of the villages. But the fact that people from the same corner of the country were crowding into the stadium in their tens of thousands could have been a major factor in the spread”.
A virologist from Rome suspects that the collective cheering at Bergamo’s gala caused so much mucus and saliva to be in the air that many visitors could be infected.
