This Florida Hockey Game Was A COVID-19 Superspreader Event: CDC Report

A hockey game back in June became a "superspreader" event where more than half of all the players ended up testing positive for COVID-19.

A team of researchers, in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, described a COVID-19 outbreak linked to a hockey game that was held in Tampa Bay, Florida, on June 16. The 22 players from both teams did not wear cloth masks while playing or in their respective locker rooms. The only "protection" some of them had were hockey-specific covers where the eyes and the top part of the nose were covered, the researchers said.

Days later, on June 19, the Florida Department of Health received a report that one of the players experienced cough, sore throat and fever the day after the game and had tested positive for COVID-19. In the following days, 13 other players, from both teams, and a rink staff member tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total cases related to the game to 15 within five days after the game.

And since the asymptomatic players did not get tested, the researchers note that the number could possibly be higher.

Because the hockey players did not have a common exposure before the game, it is likely that the transmission happened during the game, with the carrier being presymptomatic at the time. In hockey games, players tend to come closer than six feet from one another. With the game lasting for 60 minutes plus the time the players spent in the locker rooms both before and after the game, there were many chances for the virus to be transmitted.

"The ice rink provides a venue that is likely well suited to COVID-19 transmission as an indoor environment where deep breathing occurs, and persons are in close proximity to one another," the researchers wrote. "An Italian study estimating the rate of SARS-CoV-2 emission by infectious persons based on viral load in the mouth showed that during heavy exercise, a high viral emission rate can be reached during oral breathing."

For instance, the researchers also noted "widespread transmission" of COVID-19 at a choir practice and a fitness dance class in South Korea, both activities involving oral breathing. Recently, an explosion of cases in Switzerland was also linked to a yodelling "superspreader" concert that was attended by about 600 people.

Even if reports of COVID-19 cases linked to sporting events are said to be "few," the case shows how such events can be a "well suited" environment for the virus to spread. Apart from the game itself where the players tend to come close to each other, they also spend time together in the locker room and sit close to one another on the player bench.

Although there is no specific definition for "superspreader" or "superspreader events," the terms are typically used to define a person or event in which a patient infects far more people than the average patient. These events can hamper the efforts to contain the spread of an illness, in this case, COVID-19.

"Superspreader events, in which one infectious person infects many others, can lead to explosive growth at the beginning of an outbreak and facilitate sustained transmission later in an outbreak," the researchers wrote. "The high proportion of infections that occurred in this outbreak provides evidence for SARS-CoV-2 transmission during an indoor sporting activity where intense physical activity is occurring."