Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on injury risk in Qatar's professional football

Objectives: To compare injury incidence, burden and characteristics between the pre- and post-COVID-19 lockdown periods in Qatari professional football.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Methods: Injury and exposure data for two post-COVID-19 lockdown periods [early post-lockdown period: short-term ~2 months (54 matches) and late post-lockdown period: long-term 8-months (183 matches)] were compared to the benchmark of the same periods from the three previous seasons (2017/18-2019/20).

Results: We observed no difference in overall, training or match incidence between early post-lockdown period and the benchmark reference. However, this short-term period resulted in lower burden for overall- (RR 0.80, P < 0.0001), training- (RR 0.73, P < 0.0001) and match-injuries (RR 0.40, P < 0.0001) compared to the benchmark. During late post-lockdown period match injury incidence (RR 0.72, P = 0.0010) and match injury burden (RR 0.69, P < 0.001) were lower than the benchmark. In contrast, both overall- (RR 1.30, P < 0.001) and training-injury burden (RR 1.65, P < 0.001) were higher. A significant increase in adductor strains in both post-lockdown periods was observed.

Conclusions: Immediately after the COVID-19 lockdown (short-term effect), there was no difference in injury incidence but a lower injury burden compared to benchmark. Moreover, the rapid return to competition for the successive season (long-term effect) was associated with a higher overall- and training-injury burden, but a lower match-injury burden compared to the benchmark.