Chicago health officials want it to be known that this year’s Lollapalooza festival was not the cause of a COVID-19 spread.
On Thursday, Dr. Allison Arwady, Chicago’s Public Health Commissioner, made a series of tweets investigating COVID-19 cases in Chicago, adding that Lollapalooza was not a “super-spreader” event.
“We are now 14 days past the first day of Lolla, and we are continuing to investigate cases of COVID,” Arwady wrote in one tweet. “There have been no unexpected findings at this point and NO evidence at this point of ‘super-spreader’ event or substantial impact to Chicago’s COVID-19 epidemiology.”
Evidently, 90% of the 385,000 people in attendance at this year’s festival were vaccinated. Of the number of attendees, 203 had COVID-19 cases “identified” with going to the festival.
Arwady referenced these results to support her claims that the vaccine is effective despite many people’s skepticism.
“CORRECTION: 0.04% (4 in 10,000) of vaccinated attendees have reported testing positive,” she wrote in another tweet. “0.16% (16 in 10,000) of unvaccinated attendees have reported testing positive. Long story short, the message doesn’t change: the vaccine is working.”
The surge of COVID-19 rates is due to the new Delta strain. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director, said the U.S. also spoke on the matter, saying the increased rates last month put the country at a pivotal moment for dealing with the virus.
“The Delta variant is spreading with incredible efficiency and now represents more than 83 percent of the virus circulating in the United States,” Dr. Walensky said. “Compared to the virus we had circulating initially in the United States at the start of the pandemic, the Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains. It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career.”
