BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – Five thousand music lovers will attend a rock concert in Barcelona on Saturday after passing a COVID-19 screening on the same day, to test its effectiveness in preventing outbreaks of the virus at major cultural events.
The show by the Spanish rock group Love of Lesbian has the special permission of the Spanish health authorities. While the rest of the country is limited to gatherings of no more than four people in enclosed spaces, the concertgoers are free to mix, although face masks are mandatory.
People with heart disease, cancer, or people who have been in contact with someone infected with COVID-19 in recent weeks were asked not to sign up. Ticket buyers chose from three locations in Barcelona where they have to undergo a rapid antigen test on Saturday morning. Those with negative results will receive a code on their mobile phone validating their ticket for the show at the city’s Palau Sant Jordi, indicating at 7pm
According to the organizers, this is the first commercial event of this size to be held in Europe during the pandemic.
The show is sold out. The tickets, ranging from 23-28 euros ($ 27-33), include the cost of the test and the high-quality face mask that is mandatory, except when eating or drinking in designated areas.
The concert is supported by the local authorities and by experts from The Fight AIDS and Infectious Diseases foundation in Barcelona, which also organized a case study around a smaller concert of 500 people. in December. They said the results of that preliminary case study showed that pre-screening with antigen tests and the use of face masks managed to prevent infections within the concert, despite no social distancing rules.
“This is another small step towards being able to hold concerts and cultural events” during the pandemic, said Dr. Boris Revollo, the virologist involved in the design of the health protocols.
Besides being 10 times larger than the December concert, this time no control group will be maintained outside the concert hall.
Instead, concertgoers have agreed that public health authorities can inform Revollo’s team if they experience the coronavirus in the weeks following the concert. With that information, Revollo’s team will analyze the infection rates among the 5,000 concertgoers compared to those of the general population to see if there are any discrepancies that might indicate contamination during the concert.
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