CHICAGO: The hordes of people expected to descend on Chicago’s Grant Park for the Lollapalooza music festival this week will be required to show proof that they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19 or tested negative for the disease within the last three days.
The four-day festival starts Thursday and is expected to be back at full capacity, with roughly 100,000 daily attendees. After missing last summer because of the threat of the coronavirus, it will easily be Chicago’s largest gathering since the pandemic started, and one of the country’s.
This year’s festival will look very different than in the past. To gain entry, attendees will have to present their vaccination cards or a printed copy of a negative COVID-19 test that is no more than 72 hours old. That means that anyone with a four-day pass who isn’t vaccinated will have to get tested twice. Furthermore, anyone who isn’t vaccinated will have to wear a mask.
Public health officials and others have raised concerns that such a large gathering, evening outdoors, risks turning into a super-spreader event. Officials in the Netherlands were shocked after a much smaller music festival attended by 20,000 people over two days early this month led to nearly 1,000 cases of COVID-19, CNBC reported. That festival had similar safeguards to Lollapalooza’s.
Despite the recent spike in cases caused by the highly contagious delta variant, Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said this week that she feels comfortable with Lollapalooza going ahead as planned because of the precautions organizers are taking, saying they have gone above and beyond.” In addition to the entry requirements, organizers have looked at air ventilation for any indoor spaces, made sure backstage workers are vaccinated, will make masks available and will test ticket-takers.
I would not feel comfortable moving ahead with Lollapalooza without COVID protocols in place, Arwady said. I dont think I would feel comfortable if this were an indoor event, either. And I frankly dont think I would feel comfortable if we were sitting in Louisiana right now, where cases are looking like theyre looking.
In fact, while the number of new cases has climbed in recent days 176 a day compared to 104 a day a week ago the city has not seen the kind of surge reported in other parts of the country and the daily average number of deaths and hospitalizations has dropped slightly.
“We’re taking COVID seriously, Arwady said.
At the same time, “When you’re having this many folks who are coming through almost certainly there will be some cases. But Im confident that the combination of what we know about limiting risk in outdoor settings, pairing that with vaccination and or testing and ideally mostly vaccination, which is what we expect, as well as all the other mitigation factors.
Lollapalooza officials did not immediately respond to a request for further information on its screening process, but on the festival’s website, they say that there will be people manning every entryway to search all bags that attendees are carrying as well as make sure nobody is allowed entry carrying anything other than small purses, totes and drawstring bags.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.
Comments
0 comment