Liverpool’s Champions League tie with Atletico Madrid may have caused the city’s spike in coronavirus cases.
Authorities allowed the game at Anfield on March 11 to go ahead in front of a full house despite away supporters travelling from Spain’s Covid-19 epicentre.
Numerous figureheads in both cities have condemned the decision, which came just days before the Premier League was halted by the pandemic.
Matthew Ashton, Liverpool City Council’s director of public health, believed the game should have been called off in light of the virus spreading rapidly.
Six cases had been reported in the city prior to the game but that number has now risen to nearly 3,000 and 250 deaths were recorded in connection.
Last weekend Madrid’s Mayor Jose Luis Martínez-Almeida conceded that the decision to allow fans to attend the last 16 second leg game was ‘a mistake’.
The UK’s deputy chief scientific adviser Professor Angela McLean now admits that the link between the game and Covid-19 ‘is an interesting hypothesis.’
She said: “I’m genuinely sad to hear that so many people in Liverpool have been unwell and so many have died.
“In the bit of our recent history where we were living our lives as normal, under that circumstance going to a football match was not a particularly large extra risk.
“However, when you get to the situation of our strange lives as we live them now where we spend all our time basically at home, of course you wouldn’t add on an extra risk of lots and lots of people going off to the same place at the same time.
“I think it will be very interesting to see in the future when all the science is done what relationship there is between the virus that has circulated in Liverpool and the virus that has circulated in Spain.”
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the government had taken appropriate steps at the time despite increased calls to outlaw mass gatherings such as matches.
He said: “At every stage in this crisis we have been guided by the scientific advice and have been making the right decisions at the right time.
“There is often a wrong time to put certain measures in place, thinking about sustainability and everything else, and at all parts of this we have been guided by that science.
“We’ve been guided by making the right decisions at the right time, and I stand by that.”