Whether to stop or throttle back attendance at major sporting events was a major bone of contention during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New research in the journal JAMA Network Open tries to clarify the picture.
A study of NFL games during the 2020 season suggests a link between attendance and COVID spikes in surrounding counties 14 and 21 days later.
The inferred connection held strongest for games attended by 20,000-plus fans and petered off steeply for games with 5,000 or fewer seats filled.
The county-level approach let authors capture the effects of other game-day activities like tailgating but lacked a way to settle which ones affected case rates.
More research is needed to move beyond inference and nail down such specifics.
