Game Zero: Spread of virus linked to Champions League match

It was the biggest soccer game in Atalanta's history and a third of Bergamo's population made the short trip to Milan's famed San Siro Stadium.

Nearly 2,500 fans of visiting Spanish club Valencia also traveled to that Champions League match.

More than a month later, experts are pointing to the Feb. 19 game as one of the biggest reasons why Bergamo has become one of the epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic a "biological bomb" was the way one respiratory specialist put it and why 35 percent of Valencia's team became infected.

The match, which local media have dubbed "Game Zero," was held two days before the first case of locally transmitted COVID-19 was confirmed in Italy.

"We were mid-February so we didn't have the circumstances of what was happening," Bergamo Mayor Giorgio Gori said this week during a live Facebook chat with the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

"If it's true what they're saying that the virus was already circulating in Europe in January, then it's very probable that 40,000 Bergamaschi in the stands of San Siro, all together, exchanged the virus between them. As is possible that so many Bergamaschi that night got together in houses, bars to watch the match and did the same.

"Unfortunately, we couldn't have known. No one knew the virus was already here," the mayor added.

"It was inevitable."
"Right now we have other priorities."
"It was a historic match for Atalanta, something unique. To give you an idea, my wife took three hours to get to Milan, when that trip normally takes 40 minutes."