Public health officials are warning that a national cheerleading competition scheduled this weekend could turn into a coronavirus super-spreader event.
The three-day Cheersports National competition will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, and is expected to bring 40,000 people from around the country to the city.
Earlier this week, organizers announced that a related cheerleading event that was scheduled to take place in Dallas would be virtual, reports NBC News.
The Atlanta event will have strict protocols in place, though Varsity Spirit, which organized the event, noted on its website that “an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending this event, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19.”
Attendees will need to sit six feet apart, and participants from the almost 1,500 cheerleading squads in the competition will only be allowed to remove their face masks while competing.
Still, Dr. Amber Schmidtke, a public health microbiologist, said that “the fear is that these people will gather and then take the variant home with them to their communities and plant the seed.”
In January, the CDC warned that the coronavirus variant that was first identified in the United Kingdom is spreading widely across the United States and will most likely become the dominant strain by March.
Dr. Linsey Marr, professor of Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech and an expert on aerosols, said that the spread of more transmissible or vaccine-resistant COVID-19 variants means that “we need to really double down on our precautions.”
Marr noted that now is the time to be more stringent with COVID-19 mitigation techniques, and recommended upgrading face masks or increasing distance from others in public spaces.
"That’s something I’ve changed myself with the new variants," said Marr, referring to how she has begun wearing a more effective mask to go grocery shopping.
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