203 Lollapalooza Attendees Later Tested Positive for COVID, Chicago's Top Doctor Says
"So now 14 days post, as I said, we've had no unexpected findings at this point, there's no evidence at this point of a superspreader event and there's no evidence of substantial impact to Chicago's COVID epidemiology," Arwady said Thursday.
"We estimate approximately 385,000 people attended Lolla. Approximately 90% plus were vaccinated, based on measures that were taken at the site," she explained. "We used 88% vaccinated as a conservative estimate for our calculations."
Arwady said the city estimates that 0.004% of the vaccinated attendees were later diagnosed with COVID, which equates to four in every 10,000 people, or 127 attendees.
"Among unvaccinated attendees, we did as expected see a higher rate of COVID cases but it was still low," she said. "Among unvaccinated Lollapalooza attendees, we estimate 0.0016% or 16 in 10,000 attendees, 76 unvaccinated attendees reporting tested positive. And as of yesterday, we had no hospitalizations or deaths reported, we do continue to follow up."
203 Lollapalooza Attendees Later Tested Positive for COVID, Chicago's Top Doctor Says
A total of 203 people who attended Lollapalooza have since confirmed to health officials that they later tested positive for COVID-19, Chicago’s top doctor said Thursday, adding there was “no evidence” that Lollapalooza was a superspreader event.www.nbcchicago.com
Take Lollapalooza, for instance. The largely (but not entirely) outdoor four-day music festival in Chicago was held July 29 through Aug. 1, but catered to a very different demographic than the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Despite hosting over 100,000 individuals on each day of the festival, all signs suggest that Lollapalooza didn’t result in a superspreader event. This may be thanks to the fact that Lollapalooza organizers—working in active partnership the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH)—required either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to attendance, and 90 percent of attendees were fully vaccinated. Moreover, masks were required in indoor spaces for the last two days of the event (once more, under the advisement of the CDPH).
Sometimes referred to as “the Swiss cheese model of pandemic defense”, preventive measures like testing, masks, and vaccination act together to protect against infection and perform best in combination than any one of them does alone. It’s a reality that may have spared Lollapalooza from becoming a superspreader event
Warnings About the Sturgis Rally Have Come Tragically True
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos GettyIn western South Dakota’s Meade County, more than one in three COVID-19 tests are currently returning positive, and over the last three weeks, seven-day average case counts have increased by 3,400 percent. This exponential growth in cases is...
