BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – Five thousand music lovers will attend a rock concert in Barcelona on Saturday after a screening on the same day COVID-19, to test its effectiveness in preventing virus outbreaks at major cultural events .
The show of the Spanish rock group Love of Lesbian has the special permission of the Spanish health authorities. Although the rest of the country is limited to gatherings of no more than four people indoors, concertgoers will be able to mingle freely, although face masks are mandatory.
People with heart disease, cancer or who have been in contact with someone infected with COVID-19 in recent weeks were asked not to enroll. Ticket buyers chose between three places in Barcelona where they will have to undergo a rapid antigen test on Saturday morning. Those with negative results receive a mobile code that validates their ticket for the show at the Palau Sant Jordi in the city, at 7 p.m.
Organizers say it is the first commercial event of this size held in Europe during the pandemic.
The show is sold out. Tickets, which range from 23 to 28 euros ($ 27-33), include the cost of the test and the mandatory high-quality face mask except when eating or drinking in designated areas.
The concert has the support of local authorities and experts from the Barcelona Foundation The Fight AIDS and Disfectious Diseases, which also organized a case study around a concert smaller than 500 people. in December. They said the results of this 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 rules of social distancing.
“This is another small step in being able to hold concerts and cultural events” during the pandemic, said Dr. Boris Revollo, the virologist involved in the design of health protocols.
In addition to being ten times larger than the December concert, this time there will be no control group outside the concert hall.
Instead, concertgoers have agreed that public health authorities can inform the Revollo team if they present with the coronavirus in the weeks following the concert. With this information, the Revollo team will do an analysis of infection rates among the 5,000 viewers compared to that of the general population to see if there are any discrepancies that could point to the contagion.
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