Germany’s biggest
football stadium, Borussia Dortmund’s Signal-Iduna-Park, is to be partially
transformed into a medical centre to help treat patients during the coronavirus
pandemic, the German Bundesliga club announced Friday.
“Our stadium
is a symbol of the city… its technical, infrastructural and spatial set-up
make it the ideal place to help people who are potentially infected,” said
club directors Hans-Joachim Watzke and Carsten Cramer in a statement.
Dortmund said
they had transformed the north stand of the 81,000-capacity stadium — the
one opposite the famous “Yellow Wall” — into a treatment centre in
collaboration with a local medical association.
The centre will
provide check-ups, issue prescription medicines and even offer initial
treatment for those diagnosed with COVID-19.
It will be
available only to those who are showing symptoms of the disease, and will be
open daily from 12 noon to 4.00 pm.
“In this
way, possible chains of infection can also be broken by avoiding contact to
other patients, doctors and staff in the individual doctor’s surgeries,”
the club said.
“It’s
obviously strange at first to go to a football stadium when you have fever and
breathing difficulties, but we actually do have optimal conditions here,”
said Dirk Spelmeyer, chairman of the local Association of
Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KVWL).
He added that the
stadium would relieve pressure on the other specialised coronavirus treatment
centre in the north of the city.
The
Signal-Iduna-Park is the second major European stadium to be used in the fight
against the virus, after Spanish giants Real Madrid offered their Santiago
Bernabeu — another 81,000-seater — to store medical equipment.