A Florida karaoke night is now the center of a COVID-19 “superspreader” event that has claimed the lives of two people and infected over 50 others.
The karaoke night was held at the Palm Beach Social Club on August 28th. Many attendees at the club were not wearing masks nor following social distancing guidelines. Others were obviously singing that night, which is considered a high-risk activity, as it can easily spread the virus.
Gloria April, the social club secretary, said that they did their best to keep club-goers socially distanced during the night. However, it was not an easy feat. “We opened up the big room and tried to have people go into the big room, and they didn’t want to go,” April told FlaglerLive. “They wanted to stay in the smaller area.”
April said that patrons initially had on masks upon entry; however, as the night went on, the masks came off.
“It’s very difficult to get people to keep their mask on,” April spoke on an instance where a member of her staff attempted to disperse a party to no avail. “One table had 12 people at it, and she tried to get the people to not sit, to disperse at that table, to bring it down to 6. People want to sit together. You know, you can’t shoot people.”
“I’m devastated that it’s our club that’s being pushed out there because we were so careful, and it was just this one night that it happened,” April added sympathetically. “It could have happened any place, not just ours. I’ve done everything that we can to prevent anything in the future.”
Stephen Bickel, medical director with the Flagler County Health Department, said that ignorance is to blame.
“This is actually a pretty dramatic event. It’s really a tragedy. It’s certainly profound ignorance of the risk. The public may not be aware of what a risk this is. I thought they did, but maybe not.” He went on to say, “I know that churches are not having singing in their services because of this kind of stuff. I don’t know if people realize it, but karaoke is as bad or worse, because they do it for a long period of time, you’re in a closed space.”
Flagler County health department chief Bob Snyder told the local news outlet, FlaglerLive, that the two fatalities were a 69-year-old woman and a 74-year-old man.
The superspreader event has contributed to a nearly 400 case spike within Flagler County.
“It is true that for the last three or four weeks, we have experienced a spike in the county by the results of about seven or eight indicators we have been tracking,” Snyder said. “The positivity rate, the increase in cases, the increase in COVID-like symptoms for ER visits.
According to its Facebook page, the Palm Coast Social Club closed on September 1st for “renovations and deep sanitization.”
