Lollapalooza to require vaccination or test
Hordes of people are expected to descend on Chicago’s Grant Park for the music festival this week.
CHICAGO >> The hordes of people expected to descend on Chicago’s Grant Park for the Lollapalooza music festival this weekend will be required to show proof that they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19 or tested negative for the disease within the last three days.
The four-day festival started Thursday and is expected to be back at full capacity, with roughly 100,000 daily attendees. After missing last summer because of the threat of the coronavirus, it will easily be Chicago’s largest gathering since the pandemic started, and one of the country’s.
This year’s festival will look very different than in the past. To gain entry, attendees will have to present their vaccination cards or a printed copy of a negative COVID-19 test that is no more than 72 hours old. That means that anyone with a four-day pass who isn’t vaccinated will have to get tested twice. Furthermore, anyone who isn’t vaccinated will have to wear a mask.
Public health officials and others have raised concerns that such a large gathering, even outdoors, risks turning into a super-spreader event. Officials in the Netherlands were shocked after a much smaller music festival attended by 20,000 people over two days early this month led to nearly 1,000 cases of COVID-19, CNBC reported. That festival had similar safeguards to Lollapalooza’s.