Brazil’s football clubs offer stadiums to help with coronavirus patients

BRAZIL: Brazil’s football clubs were offered their stadiums to health authorities to turn them into field hospitals and clinics to battle the coronavirus outbreak.

More than half of the clubs in Brazil offered their stadiums to expand hospital capacity to deal with the crisis by suspending all football events in the country.

Club president Rodolfo Landim said “In this grim moment, I wanted to invite our great Red and Black nation to renew hope and work for better days. Let us take care of our elders, help those who need it most,” Landim wrote in a message to supporters.

Officials in Sao Paulo—Brazil’s biggest city—said they would set up 200 beds in a field medical facilities at the Pacaembu municipal stadium to relieve pressure on the city’s hospitals, while two of the city’s big clubs were also lending a hand.

Corinthians said they have made their Itaquerao stadium and their training headquarters available “so that the concerned officials can evaluate how they can be used to combat the spread of the disease”.

Santos also that a temporary clinic would be established in one of the lounges inside its Vila Belmiro stadium. Brazil has reported 1,128 confirmed infections and 18 deaths.

Chinese authorities have detected a new outbreak of coronavirus disease in December 2019. The disease has spread rapidly across the world, affecting over 160 countries and claiming more than 12,000 lives.

There are now more than 260,000 confirmed cases-most outside China where the virus originated. Europe has now become the center of the crisis, with cases and deaths rising in an alarming situation.

The increase in the number of daily confirmed cases internationally has led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the spread of coronavirus a global pandemic.