FEATURE:
The Sound of the Crowd
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How Rapid Testing Could See a Return for Festivals and Live Music Soon
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IT was not long ago…
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that I wrote an article about the pandemic and how festivals are going to return. It is a very strange time when we see light at the end of the tunnel but cannot resume normal activities for months. The fact that mass testing is smoother and becoming more prevalent has boosted hopes that festivals will return fairly soon. This article from NME explains more:
“The future of music festivals has been given a boost after the first rapid testing programme was officially announced.
Designed specifically for the events industry in conjunction with Swallow Events, the rapid 15-minute turn around test is the first to be approved by Public Health England.
Oli Thomas, founder and managing director of Swallow Events said: “The events industry has been forgotten and devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are very proud to announce we are the first events company in the UK to offer an on-site rapid testing service for COVID-19 in as little as 15 minutes, which, we believe, is a complete game-changer.
“Our rapid testing kits – a market leader (which meets MHRA target product profile with sensitivity: 96,52% & specificity: 99,68%) used in conjunction with track and trace data-collection and other Covid secure protocols such as touch point and temperature checks will help event organisers in all sectors from large scale festivals, concerts, stadia, business conferences and trade shows through to agricultural shows and small boutique festivals.
“It will kick start a £39.1 billion contributing sector to the UK’s economy whilst helping to protect over 570,000 full-time jobs which are rapidly disappearing.”
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It comes after Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis previously said that “massive testing arrangements” could be put in place at next year’s Glastonbury Festival.
Eavis’ comments on mass testing echoed those made recently by Reading & Leeds boss Melvin Benn, who told NME that he was confident that, in regards to R&L 2021, “we don’t need a vaccination because we can work through the problem with a really good testing regime”.
Venues will be especially cheered by the good news, and I think it would be easy enough to apply mass testing so that smaller venues can open. At the moment many are looking to reopen in the spring and they will want to assure gig-goers that their venues are safe and there is little chance of catching COVID-19. I see no reason why mass testing cannot be done the day of a gig or the day before - if there is a fifteen-minute turnaround, that would be wonderful (though it has yet to be implemented). Maybe patrons would have to provide a negative test when they arrive at the venue and I think that could be workable. Festivals provide greater challenges due to the sheer number of people who attend! It seems daunting to go from where we are now to the sort of scenes that we saw at music festivals last year! There is this hope that festivals can resume next year and there will be no further delays. Organisers will want to put out their line-ups early next year, and this safety net of mass testing will give them cheer.
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I am not sure how expensive and viable it would be to have a system whereby people turn up to Glastonbury and they are tested before they enter the field. They then have to wait until a test comes back negative and, if everyone is fine, then the festival can go ahead. The trouble arises with the reliability of the testing system and how just a few false-negatives can result in massive infections! Nobody really wants to take anything for granted, so the Government needs to ensure that their testing system is adequate and can accommodate the demands of the live scene. Of course, there is a hope that vaccines can be rolled out in the next month or so, which might mean that infection numbers are very low come March and April. If most of the U.K. population was to be immunised, that would ease a lot of the stress for festivals and venues. It is a nervy time where we hope a vaccine can get us back to normal by the spring and we do not have to miss too much live music! I am hopeful that we will be in a much better place in a few months or so because, after such a dark and quiet year, the demand for live music is greater than ever. Many feared festivals might not happen in 2021 but, with news of mass testing and a possible way back, hopefully many will be getting together and enjoying live music very soon. I think mass testing and a vaccine will come just in time to ensure that many festivals and venues…
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SURVIVE and can continue.