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BUNDESLIGA

Germany’s Bundesliga allowed to start season at 20 percent fan capacity

Limited numbers of spectators can return to Germany's football stadiums when the new Bundesliga season kicks off this weekend after a six-week test phase was agreed Tuesday.

Published: 16 September 2020 08:39 CEST
Germany's Bundesliga allowed to start season at 20 percent fan capacity
Cardboard cutouts of Mönchengladbach fans at Borussia-Park on April 29th. Fans hope it can help build a better atmosphere for ghost games played when the Bundesliga kicks off again. Photo: DPA

Germany's politicians are allowing each stadium to be at 20 percent capacity for the Bundesliga's 18 clubs, providing the seven-day rate of infection of the coronavirus is lower or equal to 35 per 100,000 inhabitants in the local region.

That means around 15,000 fans could now watch title holders Bayern Munich start the new season on Friday at home to Schalke 04 at the Allianz Arena.

READ ALSO: German football fans hopes dampened as coronavirus cases rise

Fans must wear face masks and stay 1.5m apart, while alcohol is banned and away supporters are not allowed.

“Sports events thrive on fans' support and atmosphere with an audience – this applies to Bundesliga games as well as to amateur sports,” said Armin Laschet, state premier for Germany's football hotbed North-Rhine Westphalia.

There was already a test run in the first round of the German Cup last weekend.

A set number of fans were allowed into each ground with the numbers varying due to the different health authorities' regulations from region to region.

Following a two-month hiatus after the coronavirus pandemic hit Germany in March, the Bundesliga became the first of Europe's top leagues to resume in mid-May behind closed doors.

The last German league game played in front of fans was on March 8th.

Germany's top flight clubs lose several million euros in lost match revenue for every home game played behind closed doors.

In August, the Marburger Bund, the association and trade union for doctors in Germany, also warned against a return of fans to the stadiums.

READ ALSO: Bundesliga: How Germany plans for football fans to return to stadium in September

“The danger of a mass infection would be real,” chairperson Susanne Johna told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper.

“If we are unlucky, a 'superspreader' would sit among the fans and the virus will spread like wildfire.

“Someone may not have any symptoms at all yet, but still his throat is already full of the virus.

“And with the shouting and cheering (at a game), it (further infections) can happen in a flash.”

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COVID-19

Is the pandemic over in Germany?

As much of Germany lifts - or prepares to lift - the last remaining Covid-19 measures, intensive care units say Covid-19 admissions are no longer straining the system.

Published: 24 January 2023 09:00 CET
Is the pandemic over in Germany?

Despite a difficult winter of respiratory illnesses, intensive care units in Germany say Covid-19 admissions have almost halved. The number of cases having to be treated in the ICU has gone down to 800 from 1,500 at the beginning of this month.

“Corona is no longer a problem in intensive care units,” Gernot Marx, Vice President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, told the German Editorial Network. “A the moment, we don’t have to think every day about how to still ensure the care of patients, but how to actually run a service that can help.”

Marx said the drop has allowed them to catch up on many postponed surgeries.

The number of sick employees in hospitals is also falling, helping to relieve the pressure on personnel.

The easing pressure on hospitals correlates with the assessment of prominent virologist and head of the Virology department at Berlin’s Charite – Christian Drosten – who said in December that the pandemic was close to ending, with the winter wave being an endemic one.

German federal and state governments are now in the midst of lifting the last of the country’s pandemic-related restrictions. Free Covid-19 antigen tests for most people, with exceptions for medical personnel, recently ended.

READ ALSO: Free Covid-19 tests end in Germany

Six federal states – Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Thuringia, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein – have ended mandatory isolation periods for people who test positive for Covid-19.

Bavaria, Saxony-Anhalt, and Schleswig-Holstein have ended the requirement to wear FFP2 masks on public transport, while Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will follow suit on February 2nd.

At that time, the federal government will also drop its requirement for masks to be worn on long-distance trains. Labour Minister Hubertus Heil says that’s when he also intends to exempt workplaces – apart from medical locations – from a mask requirement.

READ ALSO: Germany to drop mask mandate in trains and buses from February 2nd

Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will also end the requirement for patients to wear a mask in doctor’s offices. That’s a requirement that, so far, will stay in place everywhere else. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has also said that he thinks this requirement should remain. 

But some public health insurers and general practitioners are calling for a nationwide end to the obligation for wearing masks in doctor’s offices.

“The pandemic situation is over,” National Association of Statutory Health Physicians (KBV) Chair Andreas Gassen told the RND network. “High-risk patients aren’t treated in all practices. It should generally be left up to medical colleagues to decide whether they want to require masks in their practices.”

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