FOR a few hours on a Saturday afternoon in March, Simone van Erp did what, for much of the planet right now, would be unthinkable. She took off her mask, brushed up against strangers, danced, sang and shouted as loud as she could – droplets and aerosols be damned – as DJs at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, spun to a rapturous crowd of 1300.
“Everyone was really happy, enthusiastic, screaming and laughing, it was crazy,” says van Erp. “It was a good feeling. You could see that everyone missed normal life.”
It has been a year since much of the world has been able to dance and sing in a hot, crowded venue. Now studies are offering clues as to how we can safely reintroduce large gatherings into our lives.
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During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, it became clear that mass gatherings can be superspreader events, where just a few infected people can spark a large outbreak. In February 2020, before lockdowns began in the US, a two-day conference in Boston with 175 attendees was of covid-19 across the Boston area by May.
Now, with mass vaccinations gathering pace globally, while the live entertainment sector typically remains hamstrung, many nations are conducting research with the goal of bringing back large events.
France is planning to conduct . So far, about 2000 students with no underlying health risks have been enlisted to attend two separate concerts in Marseille organised by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. Attendees will be tested the day before the event, but not told their result to allow for the presence of infected individuals. Concertgoers will wear surgical grade N95 masks and be required to socially distance.
The goal is to look at the transmission rates of infected people when safety measures are in place. Attendees will be tested for the two weeks after the event. The results will also be compared with a control group of 1000 people who won’t be at either concert.
Carefree dancing
In the , participants were put in one of six bubbles, each with varying degrees of restrictions in terms of mask-wearing, distancing and movement. Van Erp was in the restriction-free group that could sing and dance alongside one another without a mask.
“I really missed physical touch,” she says. “To be amongst so many people again felt really good.”
While the results of that experiment aren’t yet available, the findings from one of the first large-scale gatherings in Germany since the pandemic began were released in October 2020, offering insight into how best to safely reopen mass gatherings.
“I really missed physical touch. To be amongst so many people again felt really good”
Dubbed , the experiment, led by Stefan Moritz at University Hospital Halle in Germany, involved around 1200 participants. They attended a day-long pop concert last August at a stadium in Leipzig, leaving and re-entering three times, with each performance under different conditions: no restrictions, moderate distancing and strict physical distancing. Everyone wore N95 masks and had tested negative for the coronavirus 48 hours beforehand. They also carried contact-tracing devices that collected data on their movements and the duration of sustained contact with others.
After feeding the data into computer simulations that tracked patterns of aerosol and droplet distribution, Moritz’s team concluded that with rigorous safety and hygiene rules – namely pretesting, the use of face masks and physical distancing – the on the overall number of infections within the community.
From the study, the team recommended the compulsory use of masks and a physically distanced seating plan at concerts, and that the venue be accessed via as many . Likewise, waiting areas, which could include coat check and ticketing, should be moved outdoors and food served in seated areas to prevent overcrowding. The team also concluded that poor ventilation in indoor venues could drastically increase the risk of transmission.
“If you use an outdoor stadium at half capacity, you will not have a problem in my opinion,” says Moritz.
But social distancing isn’t always feasible or desirable, especially where dancing is involved. Doing away with it altogether is likely to involve lots of testing.
One experiment in Barcelona, Spain, on 27 March saw 5000 mask-wearing concertgoers gather shoulder to shoulder, after testing negative with an antigen test that took 10 minutes to turn around. The researchers will follow up over two weeks to monitor positive cases.
The UK government is also looking at ways to loosen social distancing measures at mass events. It recently created the Events Research Programme, which will study the impact of things like enhanced testing and vaccine certificates at upcoming events, including the FA Cup final and the World Snooker Championship.
While the results of RESTART-19 offer hope, Calum Semple at the University of Liverpool, UK, says we need to take a holistic approach to mass gatherings. Although it may seem safer to enjoy a classical music concert or attend a football match at an outdoor stadium than go to a rave, he says it is important to look at what happens before, during and after the event.
“What really hits the population is when spectators of a football game share a 30-seater minibus for 2 hours or when they huddle in the back of a beer tent or pub before the event on a wet day,” he says. “Nothing is without risk.”
