New Delta strain believed to have emerged among 53,000 revellers at Cornwall event

[Donkees]

August 29, 2021


Festival goers attending the Boardmasters music and surfing festival in Cornwall, where almost 5,000 coronavirus cases have emerged (Photo: Boardmasters/PA Wire)


Excerpt:

Fears are rising that a new strain of the Delta variant of Covid-19 has emerged among festival goers after an event attended by 53,000 revellers in Cornwall led to sharp spike in cases among younger people.

With this Bank Holiday weekend witnessing the highest number of music lovers flocking to festivals in 18 months, Public Health England (PHE) is understood to be investigating a possible new Delta strain that may have emerged from the Boardmasters festival in Newquay two weeks ago.

A senior official working on pandemic response in the south-west of England said many of the infections among young people in the region had been identified as coming directly from the festival in Newquay, which now has the highest rate of infection in England at more than 2,000 per 100,000 people.

The source told i: “It was traced because they can identify where it came from by genetic changes in the code.”

While it is being referred to among hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall as the “festival variant”, it is believed to be a new strain of Delta rather than an entirely new variant. Delta already has around a dozen different strains.

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/boardmasters-festival-new-delta-strain-cornwall-event-1172393

[LisaL]

1. What a great idea to have mass gatherings during a pandemic.

[Treefrog]

2. No one learns.

No one wants to, or so it seems.

[Hortensis]

3. I've read that Sars-CoV-2 mutates about every 2 days,

a very useful rate for being able to contact trace and identify vectors. But in any case, millions of mutations every day. No info about whether this strain is more or less dangerous in itself.

[Timewas]

4. I have known

Some pretty dumb people in my life but never ever imagined that there were as many as I am seeing now.

[tanyev]

10. Ain't that the truth.

In normal times you always run into a few idiots every so often, but the sheer scope of how many people are willing to throw away their health or their life rather than get a shot, stay home, or wear a mask is breathtaking.

[Silent3]

15. Over my lifetime, I've had to keep lowering my assessment of "average" intelligence

That assessment took a nose dive with the start of the Trump years.

[Timewas]

16. It did

In my world also

[magicarpet]

5. Yeeee-Hasaaaa,.......

It is the middle of a dangerous pandemic,....

Let's all French kiss and exchange saliva with strangers.

[Celerity]

6. star of the show

[OrlandoDem2]

7. We are about to see college and pro football stadiums packed like this in one weekend across America

We are going to find out how safe outdoor gatherings of large groups are. I pray we don’t see a spike in 2-3 weeks but I fear we will. Delta May come after the last of the unvaccinated and it may come after those who don’t realize they should get a third shot very soon.

[madville]

9. NASCAR has been having races all year

With fans in full attendance. There haven’t been any big spreader events attributed to those as far as I know.

[Tomconroy]

8. Apparently it was a five day festival with the same people

Last edited Mon Aug 30, 2021, 12:50 AM - Edit history (1)

Attending every day. I don't know what they did or where they went at night. Certainly the picture shows a big crowd at night. Did they just stay there Woodstock style? For what it's worth I read on twitter that the portable toilets were never emptied during the five days and were overflowing by the end of the festival. It does seem pretty out there on the risk scale, even for me.
You could attend with proof of vax or a negative test. I'm going to assume UK vax rates are similar to ours among the young so maybe the majority of attendees weren't vaxxed.
What's up with UK football? Any problems there?
1.7 million people attended concerts, festivals and sporting events at the same time as the super spreader festival. There don't appear to have been other problems.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Yes, most attendees would have camped

https://www.boardmasters.com/explore/camping

The regular season football games for 2020-21 were without crowds, but they did have them for the international Euro 2020 event (at various stadia across Europe), and it's thought that did have a significant effect: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/who-warns-third-coronavirus-wave-europe-2021-07-01/ . The new English season is 3 weeks old, and full stadia are allowed.

[Tomconroy]

12. Our Major League Baseball has been playing to decent crowds all summer

Long apparently without incident
I do have to say just from reading a couple of articles about the festival, your Covid contact tracing system seems to be a whole lot better than ours.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. For a long time, the tracing system in the UK was a disgraceful joke

that cost billions, and was thought to be extremely ineffective (apart from getting taxpayer money into private company hands since they had the contracts to run it). In the latest wave, the tracing has had more of an effect - when the phone app most people have 'pings' you to tell you you've been in close contact with a case, and you should self-isolate. This happened so much it was dubbed the 'pingdemic', and it was said many people took the app off their phones to avoid being told to self-isolate.

Tracing after formal events like this, when everyone had to show vaccination proof or a recent clear test, and give their address and phone number, may have been better.

[Tomconroy]

14. 'Pingdemic'! Love it. You should explain it all in a post.

Basically we have nothing. If an outbreak happens I guess that talk to people who come to the ER.