Did Liverpool-Atletico Madrid Champions League clash cause virus outbreak in England?

A senior UK government medical officer has fuelled speculation that a major football match on March 11 contributed to the spread of coronavirus across the country.

Liverpool’s Senegalese striker Sadio Mane attempts a bicycle kick shot on goal during the March 11 Champions League match against Atletico Madrid at Anfield. Picture: AFP

A senior UK government medical officer has fuelled speculation that a major football match on March 11 contributed to the spread of coronavirus across the country.

As death rates in the UK appear to be declining, with 449 announced on Monday to bring a total death tally of 16,509, Professor Dame Angela McLean, the government’s deputy chief scientific adviser, said it would be interesting to assess the “relationship there is between the virus that has circulated in Liverpool and the virus that has circulated in Spain”.

On March 11, when Spain was in the beginnings of what would become a very tight lockdown, about 3,000 Atletico Madrid fans travelled to Merseyside to watch the Champions League match against Liverpool.

The mayor of Madrid, Jose Luis Martinez-Almedia, told Onda Cero radio: “It didn’t make any sense that 3,000 Atletico fans could travel to Anfield at that time. It was a mistake.

“Looking back with hindsight, of course, but I think even at that time there should have been more caution. From the day before the game the regional government and Madrid council had already adopted important measures on reducing large gatherings of people.”

Liverpool council officials believe the match contributed to coronavirus spreading throughout the Liverpool area.

Another Champions League match, Atalanta against Valencia, has been labelled a “biological bomb”. That game at the San Siro in February has been blamed for the virus spreading extensively across Northern Italy and into Spain.

On Monday, Dame Angela told the daily government press conference that in normal circumstances a football match would not be a risk.

“However, when you get to the situation of our strange lives as we live them now where we spend all our time basically at home, of course you wouldn’t add on an extra risk of lots and lots of people going off to the same place at the same time,” she said.

“I think it will be very interesting to see in the future when all the science is done what relationship there is between the virus that has circulated in Liverpool and the virus that has circulated in Spain. That’s certainly an interesting hypothesis.”

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak said while 17,971 people were still battling coronavirus in British hospitals, the impact of the virus in London had been reducing over the past week.

He said more than 140,000 companies had applied for grants to cover the wages of more than a million people who have been “furloughed”, or put on leave.

He announced that the government would support new and fledgling businesses to set up during the coronavirus crisis.

The government has extended the lockdown until the second week of May but one expert claimed the peak of the virus hit the UK in the middle of March, before the lockdown even began on March 23.

Oxford University Professor Carl Heneghan said data showed infection rates halved after the government launched a public information campaign on March 16 to wash their hands and keep two metres away from others. But he claimed the British government panicked when presented with revamped data from Imperial College suggesting the herd immunity strategy would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The government subsequently introduced lockdown measures.

Professor Heneghan believes the true death rate is among people who catch the virus is between 0.1 and 0.36 per cent.