The 2024 Euros Championships could be fuelling a summer wave of Covid-19 infections, according to an expert. Fluctuations in Covid levels will be no surprise over the next decades according to epidemiology expert Professor Mark Woolhouse, who says “most people” will become exposed to Covid when they are young, possibly multiple times. Recent figures from the UK Health Security Agency suggest this trend is already beginning, with infections increasing by 33 percent over the week leading up to June 19th.
Hospital admissions also increased by 24 percent in the week leading up to Sunday 23 June, rising from 2.67 to 3.31 cases per 100,000 compared with the previous week.
But with mass-testing for Covid having ended in 2023, infections are expected to be far higher than the figures recorded. “The surveillance of Covid cases in the UK is far less intensive than it once was, so it is difficult to track the rise and fall of waves of infection, or to assess the severity of different variants, or to know how effective the vaccines are against them,” Woolhouse told the Independent . He warns that there is a link between the growing summer wave and the Euros 2024 tournament, with pubs filling to the brim and friends meeting for watch-alongs as England bid to win their first ever continental championship.
“There is a widespread impression of a growing 2024 summer wave, much as we saw in 2021 when – coincidently perhaps – there was also a Euros football tournament, and evidenc.
