Could the Premier League be halted for a second time as coronavirus cases rise again in the UK? That’s the question that we’re asking this morning.
Scarcely a person on the planet has escaped unscathed from the pandemic, whether it be through direct contact with the illness or the consequences of the disruption it has caused.
We, along with the entirety of our readers, have our own stories to tell, but the grief of losing Premier League football back in the spring was shared by us all.
The prospect of the league being suspended for a second time, especially at this earlier stage of the season, is one that nobody wishes to entertain.
However, the situation appears to be getting progressively worse.
Testament to that, we had our first eleventh-hour Premier League fixture postponement of the season last night. As reported by the BBC, Everton v Man City was called off yesterday evening after an outbreak at the City camp.
MORE: Everton vs Man City called off just hours before kick-off due to further Covid-19 positive tests
This came on the very same day that, as mentioned in Sky News report, there are now more people in hospital with COVID-19 in the UK than there were at the peak of the first-wave of infections.
The situation is getting increasingly grave.
It appears to be linked to this new, highly-infectious variant of the disease which Health Secretary Matt Hancock detailed previously. You get the feeling that a storm is brewing.
While there are certainly more significant things to worry about in the midst of it all than whether the continuation of football will be plausible, the escapism it provides is important to many fans’ sanity – ourselves included.
Thankfully, there does not appear to be any suggestion that football will have to hit the pause button. Premier League clubs have state of the art testing equipment, with players regularly being required to return negative results in order to continue within respective clubs’ bubbles.
What has happened at Man City is a worry, but it is by no means a deal-breaker where the continuation of football is concerned. Football has been allowed to work around government restrictions since early summer, you see no reason as to why that would change now.
The only suggestion that could be made by the higher authorities, within football or the government, could be for clubs to tighten their in-house restrictions and ensure that their players are not socialising outside of the dressing room.
As reported by the BBC, Wolves have banned their players from shopping in supermarkets in order to minimise the risk of infection. If the situation continues to get worse, you’d expect to see clubs making decisions of this nature to become standard practice.
In short, their is currently no reason to lose sleep over the prospect of the Premier League stopping for a second time since the pandemic begun – so instead focus your energy on staying well and staying apart.