Published
Tue, Jan 5, 2021, 10:19
- Almost 500 participants attended a five-hour event at a Barcelona venue as part of the study.
A study funded by Spanish music festival Primavera Sound seeks to show how same-day testing could facilitate a return to holding indoor music events during the Covid pandemic.
The study sought to prove that holding an indoor music event under specific conditions would not lead to a rise in positive cases.
The 1047 participants were confirmed not have not been positive within the previous two weeks and tested negative with rapid antigen tests the day of the study. These were randomly split into control and experimental groups, with the former not given access to the concert. The latter group received N95 cloth masks, which were mandatory except for while drinking, but no physical distancing was required in the concert room. Dancing and singing were permitted during the five-hour event while movement and numbers in smoking and bar areas were regulated.
Both groups were tested eight days after the event. Of the experimental group, none of the participants tested positive, leading the researchers to assert "attending a live music concert staged with a series of security measures that included a negative antigen test for SARS-CoV-2 done on the same day, was not associated with an increase in Covid-19 infections." However, two participants in the control branch tested positive.
The study was run by the Foundation against AIDS and Infectious Diseases of the University Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona back on December 12th at the Barcelona venue Sala Apolo.
In a news piece about the study on the Primavera website, the festival thanked the Back On Track initiative, without whom the "study would not have been possible." The group includes major record labels like Sony and Universal, alcohol brand Jägermeister and events giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster among others.