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Good morning, Fear The Wall, and an extra Happy New Year’s Eve! We hope you’re all celebrating the beginning of 2021 safely.
Premier League Postponements
This past Saturday, a Premier League fixture between Manchester City and Everton had to be postponed due to a surge of positive tests among Manchester City players and staff, also forcing the temporary closure of the Manchester City training ground. And yesterday’s fixture between Tottenham and Fulham had to be postponed due to positive tests among the Fulham squad.
COVID is on the rise in the United Kingdom, with a reported 50,000 new cases coming in just yesterday according to Johns Hopkins University. It’s getting so bad over there that members of the health and scientific community are urging another country-wide lockdown for England.
According to a report from Sky Sports, the Premier League saw a season-high 18 positive results returned from 1,479 tests during the week of December 21-27. Sky Sports also reported that 43 games from the EFL Championship, League One and League two have been affected due to the COVID pandemic.
Thankfully, there haven’t been any cancellations or postponed matches in either the Bundesliga or the 2. Bundesliga, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been COVID scares. Manuel Akanji, Emre Can and Reinier all tested positive for COVID this year, and there are numerous other players around the league that tested positive for the virus. Thankfully, neither resulted in a serious outbreak, and all have returned to competition.
With reports of a new, more contagious strain of COVID being discovered in the United States and other parts of the world, everyone everywhere needs to be on the lookout for dangerous rises in cases. Should things get bad enough, maybe we do need to shut everything down again. I don’t think it will work as well as it did the first time, but something needs to be done to, at the very least, slow this down.
The Daily Buzz
What do you all think will happen moving forward regarding COVID and the Premier League?