There was no detectable spread of COVID-19 following the trial events held in Liverpool, new data is suggesting.
In April and at the start of this month, more than 13,000 people attended two nightclub events, a music festival and a business conference with no social distancing measures in place.
Those who attended the three-day business festival, which began on April 28th, the two club nights on April 30th and May 1st or the Sefton Park gig on May 2nd were not required to wear face coverings, and were encouraged to take both a PCR and a lateral flow test on the day of the event and five days later.
The process saw five people unable to attend after testing positive, four being identified as possibly having the virus at an event and seven having the virus four to seven days after they attended.
And after the event, only eleven people later tested positive for COVID-19, though less than half of all the attendees returned their PCR test.
Liverpool public health director Matt Ashton said the trials were ‘undoubtedly a success’, as per The BBC.
He said there was ‘definitely groups of people who were infected afterwards’, but the people ‘were known to each other, so it is also possible that those people got it after the events’.
Ashton added: “The significance of the city’s role in this pilot shouldn’t be underestimated – the eyes of the world were on us for days as we made pioneering strides to bring people back together to share and experience events without any Covid restrictions in place.”
On the results, Professor Iain Buchan from the University of Liverpool, who assessed the pilot events, said that ‘timely data and quick action to trace and test contacts of people testing positive, both before and after events, was key to containing potential outbreaks.’
He added that scientists and Liverpool City Council had identified room for improvements, which included maximising ventilation even in large indoor spaces and incentives to return PCR tests for research purposes.
