Investigating Factors Contributing to the Occurrence of COVID-19 Outbreaks in Athletes in a Scoping Review

Purpose: This study aimed to identify factors associated with outbreaks among athletes from the literature during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and consider infection prevention measures for athletes.Methods: We analyzed a scoping review of the literature published in online databases from 2019 to February 28, 2023, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines.Information on the selected references was organized and analyzed using qualitative analysis, and text mining to create association diagrams for the co-occurrence associations of the detected words.Results: Twelve references were selected for this study.We extracted [characteristics of athletes and classification of sports], [factors that increase the risk of infection], and [symptoms and characteristics of infection].Based on the results, the causes of outbreaks of COVID-19 in athletes were divided into three categories: [personal factors other than sports], [factors related to playing under sports organizations], and three closely related situations occurring in athletes' behavior and environment.Conclusion: Outbreaks were common among all types of athletes and sports.The first individuals were infected by non-sport related personal factors, and outbreaks occurred when the infection was introduced into the team.Furthermore, infection was spread by personal and collective factors related to sports.Outbreaks may be prevented by avoiding infections of individuals in their daily life.The results suggest that infection control measures for the three Cs situations unique to sports can help prevent outbreaks.早期公開