According to a report, the county in Southern California that hosted the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has witnessed an increase in coronavirus infections since the big two-weekend event earlier this month.
According to NBC News, the number of COVID cases reported on a daily basis in Riverside County increased by more than 75% two weeks after thousands of music enthusiasts descended on the area.
According to festival organizers, there were no mask, testing, or vaccine requirements for the primarily outdoor event, which included Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, The Weekend, and dozens of others.
According to Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor, “When you’re in close proximity to others singing and dancing and eating and drinking — all the things that you do with these festivals — it’s not surprising that we’re going to see transmission.”
According to reports, the number of cases in the county has increased in two weeks from 102 to 180 since the event, which began on April 14. Officials claim that the true statistics could be far higher.
“What we’re seeing is just 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 reportedly said.
In the Coachella Valley, there was still another event going on this weekend, further exacerbating the situation.
“We’ll be dealing with the echoes of this for weeks to come,” Rimoin said.
“We’re destined to see many more cases as a result.”
A subvariant of the BA.2 omicron strain was responsible for the majority of covid cases in the area. The BA.2 omicron strain is 50 % more contagious as compared to the original omicron variant and 9 times more transmissible in comparison to the delta variant, according to estimates from White House officials.
A clinical associate professor for the University of Florida, Cindy Prins, said, “we’ve looked at outdoor events in the past as being a little bit more protective than indoor events when it comes to the transmission of COVID-19, but I think that omicron really changed that calculation.”
“If you go to that kind of event, you have to expect that you could get exposed to COVID,” she added. Earlier this month, DJ Kay Slay, the Hip-Hop icon, died of Covid
