Sport could be played out in empty stadiums 'for another 18 months'

Sport could be played out in empty stadiums 'for another 18 months' until a vaccine is developed to combat coronavirus - meaning potential financial ruin for scores of clubs.

Dr Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, says tens of thousands of spectators in close proximity in a stadium is 'very, very dangerous.'

The coronavirus pandemic has led to an almost total shutdown of all sport across the globe with little certainty on when the action will resume and whether fans will be able to watch.

Playing in front of empty stadiums for a year or more would be disastrous for a number of clubs in the Premier League and the EFL who rely heavily on ticket sales and matchday revenue.

'The thing that people need to understand, epidemiologically speaking, is that every person you add to a gathering adds risk,' Dr Binney told The Times.

'Five people is more dangerous than two, ten is more dangerous than five, 500 is more dangerous than ten, 60,000 is very, very dangerous.

'Even if you have really low community-based transmission, it only takes a few people in that crowd of 60,000 for there to be a risk of something very significant happening.

'As a scientist, I hate to say I am ever 100 per cent sure about anything but I am as close to 100 per cent as I've ever been that we cannot return to filled-to-capacity stadia until we have a vaccine. Period.

'The best guess is about 18 months, could be a little more, could be a little less.'

Scientists already believe that the final football matches played before the shutdown, such as the Champions League tie between Atalanta and Valencia in front of 44,000 people at San Siro in Milan, served as a 'biological bomb' that spread the virus.

Experts believe the match explains why Bergamo, the city where Atalanta come from, became one of the epicentres of the virus in Italy.

And even if a vaccine is 18 months away, the 'logistics of immunising all 68 million people [in the UK] is profound', according to immunologist Professor Karol Sikora.

He told The Times that the best time to re-open stadiums would come when the immunity of the population through contracting the virus has reached 60 per cent.

Professor Sikora said at present only 'between 10 and 15 per cent' of the population in the UK have immunity.