National cheerleading competition could become a big thing, health officials warn

Tens of thousands of people are expected to travel to Atlanta this weekend for the Nationals Cheersports annual cheerleading competition, raising concerns among public health officials that the competition could turn into a coronavirus super-spread event.

“The fear is that these people will come together and then take the variant with them to their communities and plant the seed,” public health microbiologist Dr Amber Schmidtke told NBC affiliate 11Alive.

Event planners have strict protocols in place to mitigate the risk of Covid-19, which has infected more than 951,000 people in Georgia and killed at least 15,421 people, according to NBC News counts.

Participants and participants will be required to wear masks except during competition, spectators must sit six feet apart and all surfaces will be disinfected.

“An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present,” event organizer Varsity Spirit said on its website. “By participating in this event, you voluntarily assume all risks associated with exposure to COVID-19.”

The three-day competition is expected to draw 40,000 people and nearly 1,500 teams from across the country as of Friday.

“We’re still in a very red zone, with a lot of community transmission,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, Emory University professor of global health and epidemiology, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have just come down from the peaks. This is my biggest concern.

Varsity Spirit announced earlier this week that another cheerleading event, the National All-Star Championship, will be virtual. This event is expected to take place in Dallas at the end of the month.

“We have been closely monitoring official information from health authorities, the City of Dallas and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center regarding COVID-19,” Varsity Spirit said in a statement. “Based on this information, combined with the large size of the NCA All-Star Nationals, it has been determined that it will not be possible to host this national competition in person.”

Varsity Spirit did not explain why the Dallas competition is being held virtually but Atlanta’s not. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Like many states, Georgia struggled to vaccinate its first round of eligible residents. Public health officials recently halted Covid-19 vaccinations at a rural clinic that was giving doses to teachers, who were not yet eligible to receive them under the system at multiple levels of the state.

“It was a shock and then a lot of anger because we immediately knew that everything we had tried to do so far to vaccinate our county was just destroyed,” said Dr Jonathan Poon of Elberton Medical Center. at Nightly News.