Photo: Fiona Goodall / Getty Images
The county in Southern California that hosted the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has seen an increase in coronavirus cases since the two-weekend mass gathering earlier this month, according to a report.
The cdaily events of COVID- in Riverside County increased by more than 75 percent two weeks after tens of thousands of music fans flooded the area, according to NBC News.
The mostly outdoor festival featuring Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, The Weekend and dozens of other acts had no mask, test or vaccination mandates, according to the organizers.
“When you are very close to others singing, dancing, eating and drinking , all the things you do with is festivals, it’s not surprising that we see transmission,” said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA.
According to reports, daily cases of COVID-19 in Mountain and Desert County increased from 102 to 180 within two weeks from the eve of the event, which began on 14 of April. The authorities said that the real figures are higher.
“What we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg because we know that only a fraction of people who test positive are taking PCR tests or tests that are going to be reported,” Rimoin said.
Another festival was underway in the Coachella Valley this weekend, which complicated the increase.
“We will be dealing with the echoes of this for the next few weeks,” he said Rimoin, according to the article.
“We are destined to see many more cases as a result”.
According to reports, the vast majority of cases in the area were of the Omicron BA.2 subvariant, which is 50 percent more contagious than the Omicron strain original and nine times more transmissible than the delta variant, White House officials estimate.
“In the past, we considered that that outdoor events provide slightly more protection than indoor events when it comes to transmission of COVID-50, but I think Omicron really changed that calculation,” said Cindy Prins, associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Florida.
“If you go to that type of event, you should expect that you might be exposed to COVID,” he added.
Stagecoach Festival will take place this weekend in the same location that Coachella uses.
Read more
School COVID cases spike in Los Angeles County after spring break
Moderna will apply to the FDA to approve its COVID vaccine for children under 6 years of age
Dr. Anthony Fauci: The United States is out of the “pandemic phase” of the coronavirus