ArticleVaccines2022
COVID-19 Infection among Elite Football Players: A Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study.
Article in Vaccines, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Covid -19 Vaccination Coverage and Associated Knowledge/Attitudes: A Survey Among Professional Footballers.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Article
- Rapid Tests for Viral Upper Airway Respiratory Infections in the Workplace: A Pilot Study on a Professional Football Team.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2025Article
- Return-to-Play Timeline and Recovery Predictors After COVID-19 Infection in Elite Football Players.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Impact of COVID-19 on football attacking players' match technical performance: a longitudinal study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Review
- Proportion of Respiratory Syncytial Virus, SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A/B, and Adenovirus Cases via Rapid Tests in the Community during Winter 2023-A Cross Sectional Study.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- How Different Predominant SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern Affected Clinical Patterns and Performances of Infected Professional Players during Two Soccer Seasons: An Observational Study from Split, Croatia.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Observational
- Soccer's AI transformation: deep learning's analysis of soccer's pandemic research evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Risks, Epidemics, and Prevention Measures of Infectious Diseases in Major Sports Events: Scoping Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
24 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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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