Need to monitor spectators at Euro games as Covid cases rise: WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the coronavirus cases were on a rise in Europe and emphasised on the need of better monitoring of spectators at the ongoing Euro 2020 football games.

“There will be a new wave in the WHO European Region unless we remain disciplined,” WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, told a press conference.

When quizzed whether the Euro championship was potentially acting as a “super-spreader” event, he replied: “I hope not… but this can’t be excluded.”

Kluge further said that there should be better monitoring of spectators, including before they arrive and after they leave the stadiums.

“We need to look much beyond just the stadia themselves,” Catherine Smallwood, Senior Emergency Officer at WHO’s European office, said when asked about recommendations in the face of rising cases in London and Saint Petersburg.

“What we need to look at is around the stadia. How are people getting there? Are they travelling in large crowded convoys of buses? Are they taking individual measures when they are doing that?” Smallwood said.

She also added that it was also important to monitor at what was happening after the games.

“Should this mixing happen, there will be cases,” she said.

“What we know is that in a context of increasing transmission, large mass gatherings can act as amplifiers in terms of transmission,” Smallwood added.

News Desk

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