Bio-secure bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic to host the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League: A retrospective observational study.

Background and Aims: To describe the COVID-19 positivity rate among football players, team staff, and local organizing committee members participated in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League (West) tournament organized with the Bio-secure bubble protocol in place.
Methods: A retrospective observational study was carried out to include a total of 2184 participants during the AFC-West tournament in Qatar, which was a 3-week event (September 14-October 3, 2020). This event was undertaken under the Bio-secure bubble protocol, which was developed and implemented for sports events in Qatar during the pandemic. Within 72 h of departure and upon arrival in Qatar, all participants underwent reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction testing (RT-PCR) to diagnose COVID-19. The test was considered positive based on the cycle threshold (cT) value which was <30, whereas, reactive if cT value was ≥30 and <40, and negative (cT > 40).
Results: Of the 2184 participants (528 players, 388 team staff, and 1268 local staff), 916 international participants were tested for COVID-19 PCR upon arrival at the Hamad International Airport, whereas the local staff ( n  = 1268) were tested 2 days before entering the bubble. The mean age of the players was 27.5 ± 9.8. Fifteen teams participated and as many as 60 matches were played over 3 weeks. Most participants tested negative (95.3%) and 3.9% tests were inconclusive. During the entire tournament, the positivity rate was 2.7% among all participants. Of the total positive cases, 0.8% were positive before entering the bubble system. The remaining (1.9%) tested positive during the tournament phase (19 players, 16 team officials, and 8 organizing committee staff).
Conclusion: Bio-secure bubble protocol operated in a controlled environment presents a minimal risk of COVID-19 infection for hosting international football events. This framework could be benchmarked to resume professional football competitions under unprecedented pandemic situations.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
(© 2022 The Authors. Health Science Reports published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)