Vaccines (Apr 2022)

COVID-19 Infection among Elite Football Players: A Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study

  • Dimitrios Papagiannis,
  • Theodoros Laios,
  • Konstantinos Tryposkiadis,
  • Konstantinos Kouriotis,
  • Xenophon Roussis,
  • Georgios Basdekis,
  • Panagiotis Boudouris,
  • Christos Cholevas,
  • Stergios Karakitsios,
  • Pindaros Kakavas,
  • Theoharis Kiriakidis,
  • Panagiotis Kouloumentas,
  • Georgios Kouvidis,
  • Grigoris Manoudis,
  • Pantelis Nikolaou,
  • Christos Theos,
  • Andreas-Nikolaos Piskopakis,
  • Ioannis Rallis,
  • Stavros Ristanis,
  • Alexandros Toliopoulos,
  • Grigoris Zisis,
  • Yiannis Theodorakis,
  • Konstantinos I. Gourgoulianis,
  • Georgios Rachiotis

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10050634
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 5
p. 634

Abstract

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Little is known about the risk of COVID-19 infection among footballers. We aimed to investigate the incidence and characteristics of COVID-19 infection among footballers. In total, 480 football players of Super League Greece and 420 staff members participated in a prospective cohort study, which took place from May 2020 to May 2021. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from footballers and staff members weekly. All samples (n = 43,975) collected were tested using the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for the detection of “SARS-CoV-2”. In total, 190 positive cases (130 among professional football players and 60 among staff) were recorded. Out of the 190 cases that turned positive, 64 (34%) cases were considered as symptomatic, and 126 (66%) cases were asymptomatic. The incidence rate of a positive test result for footballers was 0.57% (confidence interval (CI) 0.48–0.68%) and for staff members it was 0.27% (CI 0.20%, 0.34%), respectively. Footballers recorded a twofold increased risk of COVID-19 infection in comparison to staff members (relative risk = 2.16; 95% CI = 1.59–2.93; p-value < 0.001). No significant transmission events were observed during the follow-up period. We found a low incidence of COVID-19 infection among professional footballers over a long follow-up period. Furthermore, the implementation of a weekly diagnostic testing (RT-PCR) was critical to break the transmission chain of COVID-19, especially among asymptomatic football players and staff members.

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