Impact of the Euro 2020 championship on the spread of COVID-19
Nature Communications·
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41467-022-35512-x
- PMID
- 36653337
- PMCID
- PMC9849464
- OpenAlex
- W4317209882
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The findings provide quantitative evidence for judging and mitigating the pandemic impact of large-scale public events, demonstrating substantial transmission amplification associated with mass gatherings during active COVID-19 circulation.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The study quantified the impact of the UEFA Euro 2020 football championship on COVID-19 transmission across participating countries.
Study design
The authors used Bayesian modeling to analyze COVID-19 data from 12 countries, leveraging the gender imbalance in case data and the quasi-randomized structure of match schedules to attribute cases to championship-related gatherings.
Population and setting
The analysis covered 12 European countries that participated in or hosted matches during the UEFA Euro 2020 championship. Scotland and England showed the strongest effects.
Main findings
Approximately 840,000 COVID-19 cases (95% CI: 0.39M–1.26M) across the 12 countries were attributed to the championship. Scotland and England experienced up to 10,000 primary cases per million inhabitants from championship-related gatherings. The average match-induced increase in the reproduction number R was 0.46 (0.18–0.75) on match days, with important matches causing increases as large as +3. The impact varied non-linearly with initial incidence, reproduction number, and number of matches played.
Public-health relevance
The findings provide quantitative evidence for judging and mitigating the pandemic impact of large-scale public events, demonstrating substantial transmission amplification associated with mass gatherings during active COVID-19 circulation.
Important limitations
This summary relies solely on the supplied abstract and bibliographic metadata. Full assessment of methodological limitations, including potential confounders, data quality issues, and generalizability constraints, requires review of the complete published article.
GIDS interpretation
This article would be discoverable through GIDS queries for COVID-19 outbreak investigations, transmission dynamics studies, and event-associated disease spread. The classifier links to outbreak investigation, transmission dynamics, and travel medicine reflect the study's focus on quantifying transmission amplification during a multinational sporting event.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 9 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.