Oriol Mitjà: I would not open Camp Nou again until the Autumn

Oriol Mitjà, an infectious disease researcher at the Can Ruti hospital in Barcelona, has told RAC1 that big sporting events will be the last thing to return to normal once the coronavirus crisis is overcome. 

Mitjà used Barça's Camp Nou as an example and he said that he "would not open it again until Autumn. Football fans will have to wait to experience live matches again."  

Mitjà, in collaboration with the Andorran biologist and computer scientist Joel López, has prepared a proposal for a staggered return to normal life once the pandemic has been beaten. He believes that "the risk in de-confining will be the appearance of new outbreaks and, therefore, it will be necessary to find the positive cases and isolate them quickly. "

The Can Ruti researcher explained that "we have to do the unconfinement in the reverse order to the confinement. The moment the ICUs have free beds, start by opening up healthy people and businesses."

Mitjà revealed that "we estimate that 10 or 15 percent of the population of Catalonia has been infected with coronavirus, almost half a million people. It is not guaranteed that all of them are immune, or if they (were) passed the disease a second time, that it would not be as serious as the first time. "

On the other hand, Mitjà affirmed that he doesn't "know when we will recover the world in which we lived, but the coronavirus will increase our sense of solidarity and it will be a lesson. There are many poor people in the world who suffer from communicable diseases and are used to collaborating."