On 17 June, Belgium scored two goals against Denmark on their own turf. That day the Danish supporters left the stadium with a broken heart, and to make matters worse—at least three of them returned home with the Delta variant as well. Annette Lykke Petri, Danish Agency for Patient Safety, told Danish station TV2:
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The three infected people all independently point out that the place of infection has been the match.
These three people who were infected during the match, as well as their close contacts and the close contacts of their close contacts have been informed.
Testing 4000 spectators
But it’s not only their close contacts that need to get tested because now Danish health officials are urging all 25,000 spectators to get checked for COVID, out of which they’ve pinpointed 4,000 that definitely need to be screened. Petri added:
So somewhere there must be one or more sources of infection, and therefore we would like to have screened everyone.
Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke tweeted on Wednesday saying that the agency is working closely with Denmark’s football association to effectively track the spread of the infection.
So far, the agency has reported 29 cases of infection in Denmark that were connected to three European Championship matches.
Safety concerns
Before the cases were publicly revealed, Dr. Zoran Bahtijarevic—Euro 2020 chief medical officer—had said that the organisers were doing their best to make it a safe and controlled environment but he admitted that there was always a risk. He said:
There isn’t any situation in life where you are 100 percent safe, but I would say watching in a stadium is safe because you are watching in a controlled surrounding in which Uefa and the local organisers have invested a lot of efforts to make it safer.
