Playing safe has its advantages – especially in times of a Corona pandemic. In order to protect the top athletes, the teams, and up to 2,300 spectators daily from an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the organizers of the Hamburg European Open (September 19-27) have acquired Hamburg Asklepios Kliniken and the clinic group’s laboratory company MEDILYS as health and hygiene partners. The Asklepios Kliniken will equip the participants and their teams, the officials as well as the visitors of the tradition-rich tennis tournament at the Rothenbaum with, among other things, disinfectants including dispensers and approximately 10,000 masks (medical mouth-nose protection), as well as infrared thermometers, special FFP2 (N95) masks, and protective clothing. The PCR corona tests for players, teams, and officials will be conducted in a specially equipped test station in the official tournament hotel Grand Elysée and then performed around the clock by the MEDILYS laboratory in Hamburg. Testing will be tightly controlled, especially at the start of the tournament.

“Protecting the health of the participants, spectators, and employees is our top priority. We aim to be a leader on the international tennis tour with our protection concept. That’s why we’re delighted to have a highly qualified health and hygiene partner like Asklepios supporting us so extensively,” said tournament director Sandra Reichel on Tuesday.

“We are proud of the enormous trust that the tennis professionals and the organizers have placed in us. The Hamburg European Open, after all, is the first sports event with a large number of spectators in Hamburg since the beginning of the pandemic – and the hygiene requirements are correspondingly high,” says Prof. Dr. Christoph U. Herborn, Chief Medical Officer of the Asklepios Kliniken Group. As the largest healthcare provider in the metropolitan region, Asklepios is extremely well-positioned to aggressively confront the possible spread of the pathogen. This is not only because the hospitals have long been recognized as pioneers in identifying and combating dangerous pathogens and provide the best possible protection for patients in the seven major Hamburg hospitals with a comprehensive hygiene concept. The specialists of the group’s own laboratory company MEDILYS, the largest laboratory cluster in Hamburg and the largest hospital laboratory in Northern Europe, perform more than 1,500 corona tests (PCR) per day in addition to the screening of high-risk patients. A total of around 700 PCR tests will be performed during the tournament week for players, their teams, and the officials, with test results being available within a few hours. With its Institute for Sports Medicine and Prevention at the Asklepios Klinik St. Georg, the hospital group also has many years of expertise in the medical care of top and recreational athletes as an official sponsor and medical partner of the Olympic Training Center Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein.