Estimating the Burden of COVID-19 Symptoms Among Participants at the 2020 USA Curling Club Nationals Tournament

  1. Paul M. Luethy

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant cause of global morbidity and mortality, with evidence suggesting that activities involving heavier breathing, such as singing and exercise, can result in increased risk for disease transmission. The USA Curling Club Nationals is a week-long curling tournament to determine the men’s and women’s club-level champions. The 2020 tournament took place March 7-14 at the Potomac Curling Club in Laurel, MD, and featured teams from across the United States. Preventative measures, such as increased cleaning and disinfection of surfaces, single use and disposable food containers, and canceling traditional event banquets were implemented. Despite these measures, players, coaches, officials, volunteers, and spectators contracted the virus as a result of participation in the event. We surveyed participants to assess total positivity, potential days of transmission, and the burden of symptoms experienced among the participants. We found that 55.6% of all participants reported experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19, with nearly all experiencing more than one symptom. Although most participants’ symptoms resolved quickly, 9.6% of all participants experienced symptoms for at least one month and 12.6% of all participants reported taking at least 30 days before they felt they had returned to normal. As a result of this study, we believe curling tournaments have the potential to be high-risk events for the transmission of COVID-19. Further infection prevention measures that were not yet publicly implemented at the time of this tournament may be an effective method of lowering transmission risk, although further research is required.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.08.20209437: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: This study was submitted to and approved by the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) Institutional Review Board (IRB) as Exempt under protocol number HP-00092884.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based software platform designed to support data capture for research studies, providing 1) an intuitive interface for validated data capture; 2) audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures; 3) automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages; and 4) procedures for data integration and interoperability with external sources.
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)
    Violin plots were generated using the ggplot2 package (11) and bar plots and heatmaps were created in the base package of R version 4.0.2 (12).
    ggplot2
    suggested: (ggplot2, RRID:SCR_014601)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A particular limitation of this study was the lack of testing—particularly viral testing, which is considered to be the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19—available after the conclusion of the event. Due to this limitation, we have mainly focused our descriptions on the burden of symptoms in participants. In addition, many participants (n=35, 18.7%) reported being concerned that one or more close contacts who did not attend the event became symptomatic or tested positive after the event. Although this question was meant to assess potential secondary cases, another limitation of this study is the authors’ lack of resources and expertise to complete contact tracing after the event. Indeed, it would be a large task as many participants flew home after being exposed at the event. Finally, this study did not assess whether symptomatic volunteers were stationed in the ice shed or the warm room in relation to their volunteer assignment. This question could have helped to determine which environment represents a larger transmission risk. However, this likely would have been difficult to assess, as some volunteers often spent time in the ice shed and warm room as a part of their duties. We believe that both environments were potential transmission areas as evidenced by the 77.3% of players and coaches who developed COVID-19 symptoms and spent significant time on the ice and in the warm room. In conclusion, we observed that curling tournaments can pose a significant risk for transmi...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.08.20209437v1 on medRxiv