News Scan for Mar 24, 2022

NFL games didn't contribute to county COVID-19 spread, study suggestsNational Football League (NFL) games played with fans in the 2020 season, with mask mandates and physical distancing in place, had no effect on COVID-19 infections in the surrounding county, suggests a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).Led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, the study estimated the effects of games played from September 2020 to early January 2021, well before the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Of 29 stadiums, 13 were closed throughout the season, and 16 opened with reduced capacity, mask requirements, distanced seating, mobile ticketing, and enhanced cleaning.The researchers tracked COVID-19 cases in counties surrounding the stadiums and compared them with those in simulated counties without stadiums but with similar patterns of COVID-19 leading up to the season.They found no difference in COVID-19 case trajectories between counties that did and didn't host NFL games.

To ensure that their method didn't miss case spikes, the team tested it on the August 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, a superspreader event.

The analysis detected the case spike in surrounding Meade County in the 2 weeks after the rally."These results show that the measures adopted by the NFL were effective in safely opening stadiums," senior author Anette Hosoi, PhD, said in an MIT press release. "If case counts start to rise again, we know what to do: mask people, put them outside, and distance them from each other."Of note, some counties hosting NFL games saw a slight dip in COVID-19 cases. "These are football communities with dedicated fans," Hosoi