Bullet for my Valentine on stage at Download Pilot 2021

UK government publishes Covid-19 findings from live music test events, recommends reduced crowds

The UK goverment ERP (Events Research Program) has published full findings of the Covid-19 test events this year which included Latitide Festival, Download Festival and The Brit Awards.

The key takeaway is the quote “case numbers were largely in line with or below community infection rates for the duration of the programme”.

The report also suggests that variance in transmission rates is due to tranpsort to the event and ‘behaviour’ while at an event.

You can read the full report here.

The report lands at a time when the Foo Fighters face venue changes in the US due to their vaccinated only policy for concerts and many US acts have cancelled European tours due to Covid-19 quarantine restrictions and the questions raised by the latest Omicron variant of Covid.

The report recommendations for live music events are listed below.

Venues and event organisers should consider their ventilation strategy, occupancy, operations, space utilisation, and people movement outcomes within an overall risk assessment tailored to each venue

While ventilation can reduce the risk of long-range airborne transmission, it does not eliminate the risks posed by other modes of transmission amongst close contacts (i.e. surface and droplet transmission). Appropriate mitigations are best adopted as part of a hierarchy of controls such as an enhanced ventilation strategy, requiring the wearing of face coverings and reducing crowding. High resolution fixed monitoring of air quality and people movement can be used to determine ventilation effectiveness and identify areas of higher risk to prioritise their improvement. For complex or large venues or high-occupancy events, specific mitigations are best developed in consultation with ventilation and crowd movement experts.

Additional consideration of the ventilation requirements in UK building regulations may be needed with a view to improve post-occupancy indoor air quality and build resilience to future infectious diseases.

Analysis of the data from ERP continues and further modelling and investigation of key risk factors will be carried out.

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