Primavera Sound hails live music trial without social distancing a success

Last Saturday (12 December) Primavera Sound hosted the PRIMACOV live music event trial, which was originally supposed to take place in October.

The event, organised by Primavera Sound in association with Hospital Germans Trias in Barcelona and the Fight AIDS and Infectious Diseases Foundation, has been hailed as a success after hosting 1,042 people at the 1,608-capacity Sala Apolo venue in Barcelona.

PRIMACOV was hosted as a clinical trial to see if rapid COVID-19 testing could allow live music events to return without social distancing.

Local artists including Marta Salicrú, Unai Muguruza, Mujeres and Renaldo and Clara, alongside the attendees had to test negative for the virus upon entry via rapid testing kits, with results available in 15 minutes.

According to IQ Magazine, the PRIMACOV team said, "That was, precisely, the objective of this study: to validate these kind of tests as an extremely useful tool to be able to carry out any type of event, whether musical or not, without social distancing."

The full results of the PRIMACOV trial event are due to be released next month, but Primavera Sound has warned that the results won't be totally accurate unless all 1,042 attendees carry out a second test on 20 December.