LaLiga reacts to outbreaks: new COVID protocol

Spanish football is going on Christmas holidays today with all the alarms on. In recent weeks there has been a constant drip of positives from COVID in the squads of the First and Second Division teams and the first shoots are already appearing. This has led to today The LaLiga Delegate Commission approves a new COVID protocol, to which AS has had access, reinforcing the number of tests to 60 daily per team and new coexistence measures.

Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, already warned a week ago, when the sixth wave began to appear, that it was necessary to prepare: “You have to be worried. There will be a new protocol because the situation is different. Obviously a party, it is in the norms and we are prepared for it “. A week later, the LaLiga Delegate Commission has reinforced the control of positives for COVID in all teams. It is intended to control any positive and isolate it quickly to avoid outbreaks within the equipment. Last weekend more than twenty positives were detected in Lugo, forcing them to postpone their meeting. The objective is clear and this is what Javier Tebas said today to the media: “We hope not to have to stop any day.”

All clubs must perform a daily antigen test each time the facilities are accessed (training, concentration, treatment …) and on match days the local club must do it first thing in the morning or at the beginning of the concentration, while the visiting team must do a test before starting the trip. LaLiga will make antigenic clubs available for the entire control device, offering 60 daily tests to each First and Second Club (It must be submitted to players from the first team and subsidiary, as well as the rest of the personnel who are in contact with the squad). Players will undergo PCR after the return from the Christmas holidays, at the end of the FIFA breaks, new signings, players who return from three days or more of rest in a row and other situations that thus require this type of control.

On the return from vacation, in addition to the first PCR to start training, others will also be carried out weekly during the first fifteen days of January 2022 as well as the daily serological control to avoid possible infections. With a negative result in the antigen test, individual training is allowed; Once the results of the PCR tests have been obtained, the clubs are allowed to train as a group.

Also, between the new measures again recommend that the use of changing rooms be avoided. It is intended that soccer players come dressed directly to training sessions and games to avoid contact between players in spaces such as the changing rooms, one of the most feared places since the beginning of the pandemic. It was in this place that the famous Fuenlabrada outbreak at the end of the 2019-20 season is believed to have originated. “The changing rooms are areas of high risk of transmission. Specific extraordinary measures must be taken for them,” LaLiga warns the clubs. In this way, in addition to going to the changing rooms to games and training sessions, recommend showering in hotels or in their homes, limiting the use of changing rooms to a maximum of seven people, wear a FFP2 mask and have ventilation. On the other hand, during meals it is recommended that a maximum of four tables be shared and that groups be permanently assigned, thus facilitating the identification of positive potentials and contacts.

The sports measures, agreed with the RFEF since last season, are maintained. In First, each team may postpone a match due to COVID and in Second, two matches, as long as said circumstances do not occur after matchday 30 in the highest category and 34 in silver. But for a game to be postponed due to COVID, the teams must not have a minimum of 13 players (between the first team and the subsidiary) for the calls and that they always have five players with a first-team record during the game.