I’ll tell you what I think.
That game, Atalanta v
Valencia at the San Siro,
was a biological bomb.
Forty thousand Bergamaschi all travelling
together or at the same time to Milan, by
bus, train or car...”
The speaker is Fabiano Di Marco, who
is chief physician at the Papa Giovanni
XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, northern Italy.
In an interview with Corriere Della Sera,
he confirmed an uncomfortable suspicion
that the Atalanta-Valencia Champions
League tie, on February 19 in Milan, may
have been a major catalyst in spreading
the COVID-19 virus in Italy.
On that joyous night, when 40,000
Atalanta fans headed to Milan – the club
was playing its Champions League games
at the San Siro because its own stadium
in Bergamo is under renovation – nobody
suspected that one month later 6,000
people would have died in Italy because
of COVID-19. And none of those fans
who wildly celebrated their side’s 4-1 rout
of the Spanish club that night could have
imagined that within a month their town
would be the epicentre of the epidemic.
In hindsight, Di Marco and other
medical experts suspect that the game,
the celebrations, the exchanges between
the two sets of fans and, above all, the
mass movement of 40,000 people from
Bergamo to Milan offered the virus the
perfect conditions in which to spread.
Nor was it just the 40,000 fans that
travelled to Milan; there was also the
many thousands more who remained
in Bergamo that night, crowded around
TV screens in
restaurants,
bars and
homes to
watch the
game together.
Bergamo
is a town of
some 120,000 inhabitants so, in one way
or another, at least half of the population
came together to watch the game. In the
process they may well have caused a
huge spreading of the contagion.
The point here is that many of the
fans, especially the younger ones, were
probably asymptomatic carriers. In other
words, they had the virus but did not
know it because they were showing no
symptoms. Worse still, after the match
many of those supporters would have
gone home to extended family units,
some containing grandparents in thehighest age-risk category.
Given that, on average, the incubation
period is five to six days, followed by a
10-14 day period before the disease
becomes critical, a COVID-19 infection
will take approximately three weeks from
the date of initial infection. Which might
explain why three weeks after that first
leg Champions League tie the epidemic
had exploded in Bergamo, killing 330
people between March 8 and 16. By
comparison, 23 people died in the same
week the previous year.
This is not to say the entire COVID-19
epidemic in Bergamo was sparked by
the Atalanta-Valencia tie. The mayor of
Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, believes various
other factors, including the town’s ageing
population and an infected hospital, were
also key to the spread of the virus.
Furthermore, Gori pointed out that
all the most logical analysis suggests the
COVID-19 infection had probably arrived
in the region of Lombardy in January,
a month before the Atalanta-Valencia
game. Clearly, the COVID-19 infection in
Italy did not initiate with that ChampionsLeague tie, but Gori concedes it was
likely that the game gave a major boost
to the diffusion of the virus.
Gori also feels Italy has made many
mistakes in its handling of the pandemic,
largely because it was the first European
country to be badly affected. Put simply,
no one in Italy or Europe took the deadly
disease seriously enough, thus allowing a
mistake such as staging the tie in Milan.
However, in that context, Gori is
perplexed that countries such as the
United States and the United Kingdom
failed to learn from Italy’s mistakes,
continuing to allow mass gathering
events – such as a four-day horse-
race meeting at Cheltenham which
was attended by 250,000 people.
Yet even in Lombardy some people
still do not seem to have learned much.
With Atalanta’s bitter local rivals
Brescia currently finding themselves
struggling with coronavirus, some fans
had the commendable idea of displaying
a banner on a bridge bordering the
provinces of Bergamo and Brescia to
“unite” the two historic rivals.
The banner did not last long, however,
with someone opting to tear it apart.Coronavirus in football“Atalanta v Valencia at the San Siro
was a biological bomb. Forty thousand
Bergamaschi all travelling together...”
Chief physician Fabiano Di MarcoUnstoppable...Atalanta’s
Duvan Zapata causes
problems for ValenciaUnknowing...Atalanta
followers at the game
in MilanEpidemic...a funeral
in Seriate, near
Bergamo in Lombardy