NEARLY 2000 Covid cases in Scotland have been linked to football fans watching Euro 2020, it has been revealed.
Public Health Scotland (PHS) said almost two-thirds of these cases – 1294 people – reported travelling to London to watch Scotland v England on June 18.
A total of 397 of these were fans at the game at Wembley Stadium.
The PHS report said a “relatively small number” of cases in Scotland were linked to the Euro 2020 fanzone at Glasgow Green at 55 while 38 and 37 respectively were linked to Scotland v Croatia and Scotland v the Czech Republic at Hampden Park in Glasgow.
The report states: “PHS is working with Test & Protect and NHS boards to ensure that all public health actions are taken in the close contacts of these Euro 2020 cases as part of the 32,539 cases that were reported to the Test & Protect Case Management System during this period [June 11-28].”
It said that infectious fans may have "unknowingly" transmitted the virus on to others.
The government agency report added that nine in every ten of those cases confirmed from watching Euro 2020 matches were male.
Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon denied claims her Government took a lenient approach to Scotland fans ahead of the Tartan Army's trip to Wembley earlier this month.
Asked at her daily briefing if the Scottish Government could have put more pressure on the SFA to tell fans not to travel, she replied: "We haven't taken a 'softly, softly' approach.
"We were very explicit in saying to fans who didn't have a ticket for Wembley not to travel.
"We can't physically stop every person travelling and significant numbers of people did travel."
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