Pollstar (06/04/21) Borba, Ryan

Music festivals are spearheading the post-pandemic recovery of live entertainment in the U.S., with multiple 30,000-capacity, ticketed outdoor events happening or about to happen. The recent Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam country festival in Panama City Beach, Florida, required attendees to take a short poll every day to confirm that they did not feel ill or have any potential COVID symptoms, with a positive response prompting an onsite COVID test before being admitted and temperature checks at the gate. Rendy Lovelady at festival host PCB Entertainment said the event has gone cashless and deployed high-tech sanitation methods, including long-lasting disinfectant sprays on surfaces. Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam also hosted an onsite vaccination clinic, while Lovelady said masks were optional. The mood has become more optimistic as reopenings increase across the country, COVID vaccinations continue to ramp up and daily new case numbers plummet. The April 24-25 Ubbi Dubbi electronic festival in Ennis, Texas, which required, or at least strongly recommended, face masks, had a COVID-19 positivity rate of 3.8%, according to a JobSiteCare survey of more than 2,000 respondents. A post-event survey indicated a positivity rate of 3.4% two weeks later, which was lower than the general population of Texas at the time, and lower than the new COVID infection rate among those tested in Texas. The study concluded that "the lack of any difference even approaching significance in either symptom development or COVID positivity regardless of the length of festival attendance suggests that length of exposure in this setting did not increase risk of illness or infection and that the setting itself did not pose a threat to overall public health."

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