Kansas City Chiefs fan Ty Rowton hugged strangers on the streets of Miami last year after his team won the Super Bowl and then joined hundreds of thousands of fans back home for the parade of victory, thinking little of a mysterious virus that his friends were just beginning to talk about.
The championship seems to have happened a long time ago. Now the Chiefs are gearing up to play in the Super Bowl again, and the virus has morphed into a pandemic that has health authorities on edge as fans gather at parties and bars for the NFL game. .
Top US health officials this week warned of the possibility of the Super Bowl becoming a mass-spread event, urging people to watch their friends on Zoom and not host large gatherings.
“I’m concerned about the Super Bowl, to be honest. People get together and watch the games together. We’ve already seen outbreaks around the holidays to watch football,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. of Diseases. “So I really think we need to look at that and be careful.”
The Super Bowl comes at a time when the nation is seeing a dramatic decline in new coronavirus cases, a sign that the post-holiday season spike in infections is slowing. So far, more than 459,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States, but the seven-day average of new cases went from 180,489 daily infections recorded on January 22 to 125,854 reported on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Health authorities fear the game could cause outbreaks at a bad time. Just a few days ago, a case of the new variant of the coronavirus, which spread rapidly to Britain, was recorded in Kansas after cases were reported in several more states. Other highly contagious variants have also made scientists nervous. States are speeding up vaccination efforts before the variants become widespread and other mutations emerge.
After a long year of lockdowns, it remains to be seen whether Americans will heed the warnings for an event that was seen by more than 100 million people last year. The fact that Tom Brady is looking for his seventh Super Bowl ring against all-star Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes only adds to the intrigue surrounding the game.
The match will be played in front of some 22,000 in Tampa, many of them health workers who have already been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
In Tampa, Mayor Jane Castor announced a temporary order requiring masks to be worn outside of various popular hangouts. The ordinance states that violators could be fined $ 500 as a “last resort.”
