No huge spike after music fest
THERE are no signs the TRNSMT music festival at the weekend caused a spike in Covid cases, Professor Jason Leitch has said.
The event at Glasgow Green took place before the planned introduction of vaccine passports, which will be needed for entry to nightclubs and larger events from October 1.
Up to 50,000 music fans a day attended the three-day festival and had to provide proof of a negative NHS Covid-19 lateral flow test to be allowed in.
Professor Leitch, Scotland ‘s national clinical director, said TRNSMT checked every single person and the process appeared to have gone “very smoothly”, but said talks are ongoing about the logistics of checking vaccine passports at events like football matches.
Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) chief executive Neil Doncaster revealed he is “concerned” about the practicalities of delivering the scheme and said spot-checking is the only way it can be done.
Just days after the introduction of passports around 50,000 people will cram into Hampden for a World Cup qualifier against Israel.
Professor Leitch said that spotchecks are “not a ridiculous idea” and that they are one option, while staggered entry is another.
Speaking on the BBC’s Good
Morning Scotland, he said: “TRNSMT tested every single person and they checked every single person, we had some meetings earlier in the week to debrief about how that had gone and it had gone very smoothly, now that is relatively simple visual check of an app or an email or a test, so it’s not impossible but we do need to work out what Neil’s saying,
“Sixty-thousand people at Hampden all arriving at once, that does create some logistical difficulties. Spot-checks is not a ridiculous idea but we just need to get the balance right don’t we, between checking 60,000 and checking six, so somewhere in there is probably a sweet spot.”
He said that authorities do not want to make attending football or rugby matches a chore, but that with more than 4,000 cases a day and 30 deaths reported on Wednesday such measures are necessary.
Professor Leitch added: “Inconvenience is one of the things we’ve had for 18 months and inconvenience is going to continue until we can get on top of this wave.”
He also said there were no signs the music festival or the return of students to further education has led to a big rise in cases.
He said: “We’ve got no signs of TRNSMT causing us big levels of infection and I would have expected that to start to come through by now, although it is early days.”