(13 Dec 2020) Eager for a live music show after months of social distancing, more than 1,000 Barcelona residents gathered Saturday to participate in a medical study.
It will help evaluate the effectiveness of same-day coronavirus screening to safely hold cultural events.
Participants were eager to have some fun but also to try to help entertainment businesses such as concert halls.
After passing an antigen screening, 500 of the volunteers were randomly selected to enjoy a free concert inside Barcelona's Apolo Theatre.
The other 500 who weren't selected were sent home.
They will form a control group that will allow the organizers to analyze if there was any contagion inside the concert hall despite the screening.
The antigen tests, while not as accurate as other types of tests, do produce results in 15 minutes as compared to several hours, or days, later.
The study has been organized by Barcelona's The Fight AIDS and Infectious Diseases Foundation along with the Primavera Sound music festival and was given the go-ahead by the regional authorities in northeast Catalonia.
For Dr Bonaventura Clotet the trial could be "the beginning of the normalization, or a kind of normalization".
As for Dr. Boris Revollo, the virologist who designed the study's protocols, he told the Associated Press that the event was not a party, but a scientific study.
He insisted that the use of same-day antigen screening for large events wasn't a substitute for face masks and other sanitation rules, but he believed it could be a powerful tool in making large events safe enough until vaccines are beating back COVID-19.
The 500 allowed into the five-hour music festival of rock groups and disc jockeys had to wear FFP2 face masks and use hand disinfectant.
Social distancing, however, on the concert floor was not enforced in an attempt to get as close as possible to a real concert atmosphere.
All 1000 of the volunteers will undergo two PCR tests, which have a higher capacity to detect the virus than the same-day antigen test, first on Saturday before the concert, and then again eight days later.
Revollo said these PCR tests will allow him and his fellow investigators to determine if any infected people got past the same-day antigen screen and, if so, did they infect others inside the show.
Concert halls have been one of the hardest hit sectors by the health restrictions applied in Spain, twice being completely shut down for several months.
In November, an association representing them said that more than 25,000 shows had been canceled because of the pandemic, costing the industry 120 million euros ($145 million) in lost revenue.
Halls were only recently allowed to reopen in Barcelona but at 50% capacity or a maximum of 500 people.
Spain is still under limited restrictions for the pandemic that has killed a confirmed 47,600 residents.
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