Spanish Event Directors Not Happy With Government Data On Test Events
Ramon Costa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images – The crowd at Festival Vida 2021.
Alongside Canet Rock and Cruïlla music festivals, 2,279 Covid-19 positives were registered among 49,570 attendees in the two weeks after the respective events.Alongside Canet Rock and Cruïlla music festivals, 2,279 Covid-19 positives were registered among 49,570 attendees in the two weeks after the respective events.
The government of Catalonia, Spain, published figures showing that 2,279 of around 50,000 visitors at three different events – Cruilla Festival, Canet Rock, Vida Festival – got infected with coronavirus. The organizers of said events have criticized the approach taken and numbers found by the study.
The Catalan health department, CatSalut, studied the positive cases detected among visitors in the two weeks after attending the early-July events. Local news reports that of the roughly 70,000 people visiting the three events in total, 49,570 had registered for the study.
The almost 50,000 attendees were compared to a control group with similar demographics. “The study found that 466 attendees of Vida, 956 of Carnet Rock and 857 of Cruïlla tested positive for the coronavirus in the two weeks following the concerts. In the control group, the number of cases detected on the same dates of the events was 197, 525 and 571, respectively,” El Pais reported.
Given the numbers at the time of the events, the study expected a maximum of 1,437 infections recorded after the festivals. This number was exceeded by 842.
The Catalan secretary of public health, Carmen Cabezas, told the paper that while the numbers were “above what would be desirable, (…) we can’t say they have been superspreader events.”
– Jordi Herreruela, director of Cruïlla Festival in Barcelona.
Has been heavily involved in all the test events run in Barcelona over these past months.
The directors of the events in question, Jordi Herreruela (Cruilla), Dani Poveda (Vida), and Gemma Recorder (Canet Rock), gave a joint interview on local Barcelona radio station Rac1, criticizing the findings.
Herreruela said the study offered a distorted picture, which “we cannot accept as good,” and which “outrages us.” He’s quoted by El Pais as saying, that if the study were conducted in the manner in any other economic sector gathering large amounts of people, it would have produces “equal or worse results.” He said the health department conducted the study in an improvised and uncoordinated manner.
Poveda would have wished for “a little more rigor” in the implementation of the study, and hinted that the events’ organizers had been left in the dark about these findings and their publication. He acknowledged that not all guests stuck to the mask mandate, which was in effect at all three events, but added, that “it did not help” that the mandate to wear masks on the streets had previously been lifted by the Catalan government.
Recorder reiterated that the study didn’t seem to have been conducted rigorously, which is why she didn’t want to simply accept the data. She asked that the figures be better explained. She added that the number of daily infections in Catalonia was 8,000 at the time of the festivals, which should put the number of positives attributed to these events into perspective.
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