In Costa Blanca One Third of Valencia’s Football Squad Gets Infected With the Coronavirus After Recent Champions League Match Against Italy’s Atalanta

In Costa Blanca the Spanish La Liga football club Valencia has been hit hard by the coronavirus. Yesterday, the club reported nine new cases of COVID-19. This is one-third of the squad that played the latest Champions League match against Italy’s Atalanta.

The Atalanta club is based in Bergamo in the region of Lombardy – one of the areas that have been hit the hardest by the contagious virus in Italy in the last few weeks.

The Valencia team played against Atalanta in Milan on February 19 and one week ago, March 10, the Italian team visited Valencia’s home arena for the second meeting in the Champions League eighth-finals in front of empty stands.

Although Atalanta itself did not report any positive tests themselves in the squad (tests are no longer being conducted in Italy if not acutely ill), the meeting most likely spread the infection to the Valencia squad. In just a few days, positive cases of the virus have now rapidly spread in the Costa Blanca squad. A couple of days ago five cases were announced, and last night Valencia announced that a total of nine new cases hit players and team leaders.

In total, 35% of the squad has now been infected with the virus.

“No case is serious and everyone is in their homes with medical supervision and with isolation measures implemented,” the club writes in a press release and at the same time wants to stress how easily the infection spreads.

“Although strict measures were adopted when the club travelled to Milan, this shows that the exposure in the squad is 35% positive cases. Valencia wants to take advantage of this event to once again stress that the people of Spain must stay at home and strictly follow all hygiene measures and other preventive measures advocated by the health authorities,” the club writes.

The identity of the nine infected people has not yet been officially announced by the club.