Liverpool game and Cheltenham races ‘led to more victims’

ALLOWING the Cheltenham Festival and a Liverpool Champions League match to go ahead caused extra coronavirus deaths, a leading scientist has claimed.

Professor Tim Spector said the number of infections ‘increased several fold’ around both areas because of the pre-lockdown events in March.

‘They’ll have caused increased suffering and death,’ the epidemiologist, of King’s College London, told Radio 4’s File on 4. Professor Spector runs the UK’s largest coronavirus tracking project, the Covid Symptom Study app.

Other countries were more cautious, cancelling and postponing sporting events. But on the first weekend in March in the UK, there was a full programme of football in England and Scotland, as well as five horse racing meetings, and Six Nations rugby at Twickenham between England and Wales, which Boris Johnson attended.

On March 10, 250,000 spectators descended on Cheltenham for the fourday racing festival.

About 3,000 Atletico Madrid fans travelled to Anfield for a March 11 match against Liverpool in the Champions League, despite rising cases in Spain.

That day, the World Health Organisation declared the virus a pandemic and warned of ‘alarming levels of inaction’.

The Jockey Club insist it followed the Government’s lead. Liverpool FC could not have called off the match without facing disciplinary action by governing body Uefa. Uefa insisted it was not asked to close doors to fans. The Government said ‘many factors’ could influence the number of cases in an area.