A music festival is being blamed for a COVID outbreak in The Netherlands. 20,000 people attended Verknipt Festival in Utrecht during the first weekend of July, with over 1,000 attendees testing positive since.
Verknipt Festival was conducted under “COVID secure” conditions, requiring attendees to be fully vaccinated or show proof of a negative test whilst the event itself took place outdoors.
“We cannot say that all these people were infected at the festival itself; it could also be possible that they’ve been infected while travelling to the festival or in the evening before going to the festival or having an after-party. So they’re (the cases) all linked to the festival but we can’t 100% say they were infected at the festival,” Lennart van Trigt, a spokesman for the Utrecht health board, or GGD, said to CNBC.
One concern regarding the entry restrictions was the 40-hour window for getting a COVID test. Van Trigt cited a 24-hour window as being preferable.
“We’ve found out now that this period is too long. We should have had a 24 hour [period], that would be a lot better because in 40 hours people can do a lot of things like visiting friends and going to bars and clubs. So in a period of 24 hours people can do less things and it’s safer,” he said.
The Netherlands is not the only country seeing spikes in COVID-19. In the United States, Los Angeles country recently reimplemented a mask mandate for all indoor activities regardless of vaccination status due to a rising number of cases.
