Coronavirus DK: Real soccer fans stick together

Just because the coronavirus has been brought under control in Denmark, that doesn’t mean that Danes are supernaturally conscientious and disciplined about maintaining social distancing and following other healthcare recommendations. When given a chance, they can also go amuck (DK). That’s what happened during the Danish Cup Final, the culmination of the soccer season. When the Premier League resumed play on May 28, only 500 fans were allowed to attend matches and they had to abide by social distancing provisions. Since the first matches went well, the limit was raised. The Minister of Justice decided that up to 750 tickets could be allotted for each team’s fans at a match between Aalborg (AaB) and SonderjyskE in Esbjerg last week.

Showing their team some enthusiasm

About a half hour after the match began, Aalborg fans left their assigned seats and crowded together (DK). They sang, waved flags and launched flares as they used to do in the good old days. After they ignored several announcements over the loudspeakers directing them back to their seats, the referee stopped play. Stadium security guards tried to escort them back to their proper places. AaB’s assistant coaches ran over and tried to persuade them to cooperate. But 44 fans were unruly and were ejected from the stadium and arrested. They were put on a bus and driven home to Aalborg, accompanied by the police.

Aalborg fans in Esbjerg. Photo: Claus Fisker/Ritzau Scanpix

Can soccer fans behave?

The incident was disappointing for officials who had worked to get spectators back in the stands. The number of tickets allotted depends on the size of the stadium, and up to 10,000 would be allowed into Parken, the largest stadium, in Copenhagen. They must now evaluate the policy.

“It was chaotic. That’s the most appropriate word I can think of,” says Christian Rothman, the chair of the Danish Soccer Fans association. “We must be honest so that we can try to understand how it escalated like that.” Rothman, a diehard AaB fan himself, attended the match and watched events unfold. A set of fans belonging to an unoffical group called “Auxilia” decided that if they couldn’t watch the match on their own terms, they wouldn’t stay, and that is when the police intervened.

Competing stories

The next day, Auxilia had its own interpretation (DK) of the incident: When its members left the stadium peacefully in order to allow the match to resume, they were met by a very aggressive police force that used violent measures against them. A video that went viral shows a cop hitting one fan with a baton after he was already lying on the ground.

The explanation from the Southern Jutland police (DK) was of course somewhat different. It describes the unruly fans trying to break doors and windows on their way out of the stadium. The police pacified them and set them on the ground in a long row. It seemed a little strange to a virologist, Søren Riis Paludan of Aarhus University, that they should be ejected from the stadium for standing too close together and then placed so close together again by the police afterward. But if they were all facing in the same direction, it wasn’t so bad, he said.

The fans asked to sit like that themselves, said the police. “They said it was a strain to sit without leaning up against each other. Since the same fans had sat on the bus from Aalborg together, stood together, walked together and had been at a bar together, they were allowed to stay where they were sitting.”

The match was stopped for 15 minutes with the score 0-0. When it resumed, SonderjyskE scored and went on to post its first win in the Final, 2-0. The spectator attendance experiment ended 1-0 to Alcohol over Social Distancing.

Coronavirus DK: Pop the champagne, play ball, and defend Greenland

Maybe Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was reading the same opinion column (DK) as I was yesterday about relaxing the restriction on freedom of assembly because the government has proposed increasing the number of people allowed at a gathering from ten to 50 on Monday. It sent a letter to the other party leaders as a preparation for negotiations on the measure this weekend. The proposal entails a plan to raise the limit on gatherings (DK) in three phases: to 50 on June 8, to 100 on July 8, and to 200 on August 8, with certain exceptions and qualifications. The government has been under increasing pressure to lift the ban recently as the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to decline during the reopening of the economy.

Stay in your seats

The most important exception to the limitations concerns the first phase. The government will allow up to 500 persons to attend an event if the participants are sitting down, for example at a soccer match in a stadium, at a wedding reception in a restaurant, and at an annual general meeting in a conference center, as well as for summer activities for children. The increase to 200 in August will be allowed only for events that are arranged in accordance with “sector partnership guidelines.” The proposal also contains an extension of the limit on space for individuals in private businesses – that is, of one person per 2 square meters – to apply to all locations where attendees are sitting down. The parties had agreed on a general intention to ease the limit on gatherings at earlier negotiations in May. 

The proposal does not cover indoor sports, fitness centers and swimming halls. Negotiations on those activities, which are subject to one of the last remaining prohibitions, are also supposed to be completed by Monday.

Grudging acknowledgment

The other parties were pleased with the news. “It’s about time that the government made this announcement,” said Kristian Thulesen Dahl of the Danish People’s Party, which has wanted people to be able to hold receptions and large parties, which will also help restaurants recover some of their usual revenues. Sophie Løhde from the Liberal Party wished the announcement had come earlier because uncertainty about the prohibition might have caused some people to cancel their wedding plans. She also wants soccer clubs to receive compensation if they normally attract more than 500 spectators. The government’s supporting parties also think the proposal is sensible, adding that they depend on the continued observance of hygienic recommendations as well as contact tracing and isolation of infection cases.

Not him again

If this weren’t enough good news for Constitution Day, Denmark, via the person of Queen Margrethe, received congratulations from an unexpected quarter (DK), none other than the national leader whose reputation has sunk to the most horrendous depths this week. Trump’s people took the time to make this gesture on a day when the president was busy saying that this was "a great day for [George Floyd]" because the unemployment rate fell for the first time since the pandemic hit. The message also mentions the reopening of the US Consulate in Greenland, a reminder of the country’s security interest in the region and Trump’s offer to buy the autonomous territory last year, which was rejected as “absurd” by PM Frederiksen. 

Commentator Troels Mylenberg notes that especially on Constitution Day such congratulations should have been directed toward the democratically elected Parliament rather than a monarchic figurehead and that they wouldn’t have come at all if Trump wasn’t still interested in expanding US activities in Greenland. The message appears on the US Embassy’s website beside an alert about demonstrations against police brutality and racism that will be held in front of the Embassy this weekend. 

Coronavirus DK: High risk only for the chronically ill

Only 24 of the people in Denmark who have died of COVID-19 did not have a chronic illness. That is the main finding of an evaluation by SSI (DK), the agency for preparedness against infectious diseases. It covered 9,519 cases and 524 deaths related to the coronavirus as of last week (since then, the number has risen to 568). It shows that there is very little risk of dying for infected people who are not elderly and do not have chronic illness. That is, the risk is not high even for patients who are 80 years and do not have a chronic illness or for those who are under 60 and have a chronic illness. 

Of the 9,519 who tested positive, 22 percent were hospitalized and 6 percent died. The researchers caution that the estimate of the number of infections is closer to 100,000 than 10,000, so the fatality rate in the population is around 0.6 percent rather than 6 percent.

Average age at death perfectly normal

Three-quarters of those who died were over 75 years old, and 82 percent of them had more than one chronic illness. The average age of death is 82, which is the same as overall life expectancy in Denmark. The danger related to chronic illness is similar to that of ordinary influenza, says Reimer Thomsen, head doctor at Aarhus University Hospital who took part in the review, but the difference with COVID-19 is that it is very infectious. It can thus overwhelm hospitals, and more patients die because there are not enough beds in ICUs, as occurred in Italy.

Results from COVIDmeter

Six weeks ago, SSI launched a voluntary survey of persons who report symptoms (DK) once a week. Some 120,000 have participated by answering three simple questions on a website called COVIDmeter: Have you had symptoms in the past week? Have you been in contact with someone who is infected? Have you been tested? SSI has released the first set of results, and they show that the number of people with symptoms has fallen sharply over the period, from around 1.3 percent to around 0.25 percent. Since the survey is voluntary and not everyone has been aware of it, the results are approximate and subject to a margin of error. 

The purpose of the survey was to serve as a supplement to the testing program and get an estimate of the number of infections among people who have not been tested. The people who reported symptoms were spread fairly evenly across age groups, and the trend in symptoms has generally followed the falling trend in hospitalizations of those tested.

Symptoms declined during Easter parties

The number with symptoms fell most sharply, to about 0.6 percent, during the first week of the survey, which ended on Easter Sunday. That is an interesting development, because officials had warned that people might have a tendency to relax their observance of social distancing guidelines in order to gather with their families on Easter weekend. See the charts showing a breakdown of the results (DK).

Soccer and amusement parks are back

In other news (DK), the Tivoli and Bakken amusement parks are opening today, albeit with limitations on the wildest roller coasters in order to prevent infections from screaming riders. Soccer play resumed in the Danish Superliga as the AGF club used the Zoom videoconferencing platform on a large screen at the Ceres Park stadium in Aarhus to create a "virtual grandstand." The match with Randers ended in a 1-1 tie.

Coronavirus DK: Corona football and free-range pets

On Sunday the number of people hospitalized for Covid-19 rose for the first time in a week. The trend has been steadily downward since April 1. The increase prompted the question of whether Denmark is beginning to see the consequences of the relaxation (DK) of restrictions around two weeks ago. The change is insignificant, says Søren Riis Paludan, Professor of Virology and Immunology at Aarhus University: “People feared that after the reopening the curve would fly up again, but that hasn’t been the case. With the degree of opening we have now, the spread is under control. We should be ready to open further.”

Scientific evidence for safe soccer

A ray of hope for a return of the national pastime has appeared. Researchers at Aarhus University have determined that soccer matches in Superliga (DK), the highest professional league in Denmark, can safely resume. Allan Randrup Thomsen, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, concurs: “Football [as the sport is called outside of North America] does not pose a real infection risk.” The Health Authority considers that there is a risk only if people are within two meters of each other for 15 minutes. Using that parameter, the researchers estimated, on the basis of an analysis of 14 Superliga matches, that if one player is infected, the other individual players will be within infection range for an average of only one minute and 28 seconds in a match.

That was welcome news for Claus Thomsen, the head of the Superliga association, which has been working on plans to play under special guidelines that will minimize the danger of infections. If the matches resume, they will take place without spectators in the stadiums. The 88-second figure applies only to matches with one infected player, however. With two of them, players would be exposed to the virus for an average of about three minutes; with three infected players, for four and a half minutes. Another study from Italy and Germany offers a cautionary message. It concludes that elite athletes are subject to an unusually high risk because of their heavy breathing during extreme exertion. Neither study has been peer-reviewed.

No-touch football

Meanwhile, the Danish Football Union, the overall governing body for soccer in Denmark, has prepared a set of “corona rules” (DK) – guidelines that will allow local clubs to play according to the pandemic restrictions. The rules are rather extensive: No more than ten people can practice together, including the coach; players must always keep two meters’ distance from one another; touching the ball only with the feet except by the goalkeeper; liberal use of sanitizer; no use of locker rooms and showers. It will not be the familiar rough-and-tumble contact sport as before.

“It’s better than nothing,” says Tom Helligsøe, the head of the IF Lyseng club. Others think the rules are too strict, for example sanitizing all the balls and other equipment. “How can a ball infect you if you’re not allowed to head it, pick it up or trap it with your body?” asks Jan Busk, the head of the Frederiksberg Alliance, which has 2,000 members. The rules need to approved by the Health Authority before the clubs can resume activities.

No to American pet quarantine

After dogs and cats in the US have been found to be infected with the corona virus, the CDC has issued social distancing rules for pets (DK): Keep cats indoors; keep dogs on a tight leash, at least two meters’ from other dogs as well as humans; limit contact with them. But they aren’t necessary in Denmark, says Randrup Thomsen, who is consulted by journalists about pandemic measures almost daily. There are still no reports that pets have infected people. Nevertheless, if you are in high-risk group, adds Thomsen, you can consider keeping your cat indoors, although that may be difficult for a cat that is used to being out. “But the most important thing is not to let them lick your face. In principle, you should never let them do that because they can infect you with all kinds of diseases.”