Festivals, are entry requirements hogwash?

[Dollyparton3]

We have a teenager in the house who is off to Reading next weekend and his mates are dropping like flies with COVID at the moment.

The Organisers have been very proactive in saying you must provide proof of a lateral flow test on the day of the event or be double jabbed in order to gain entry. Sounds sensible.

However aforementioned teen says that other recent festivals have been a COVID mosh pit due to the lateral flow proof being a case of you going into the NHS app and "self reporting" that your test result is negative. So if you're so inclined and had COVID, you'd report it as negative just so you don't have FOMO all weekend.

Concerned as one of his mates has COVID at the moment which means he should be isolating past the event but apparently he thinks he'll be fine by then so will just report that he's clear. Surely loads of people will do the same.

The organisers insist on a test 72 hours after entering the festival but this bit seems so wooly to me unless I'm missing something?

LFT aren’t highly effective and those double jabbed can still catch and transmit the virus can’t they?
I’m not sure how many are following isolation anymore so it’s not impossible there will be people there who should be staying home.

My older son was at Boardmasters and he said that when his group was admitted they said they were double vaccinated (all early 20s so it was true) and the guy waved them through without checking their proof. So it seems that a combination of LFTts not being 100% accurate, people developing Covid in the 48 hours after doing an LFT and no one really checking did its stuff.

All my ds group of friends who went to boardmaster came back with coronavirus .

Well if 1/75 have covid, if say 5000 people then 66 would have covid. Lateral flow might find 50%. Vax would also reduce by 50%. So does that mean maybe 15 or so.

Is it the people sharing tents or singing even outside/shouting?

We had a friends son who came home from boardmasters with the virus as well. Maybe this is the herd immunity doing it's bit?

Seems nuts though that the "proof" you have to give isn't proof at all. It's just a polite nod by the organisers to suggest their doing their bit.

We had to do a video lateral flow to go to a festival. No getting around it. Can’t remember the app

Agree with PP-all of my friends whose kids went to Boardmasters have also come back with covid. I know not a scientific sample but more teens than I have heard of being positive so far

Today I heard of 5 teens, all from different parts of the country, who went to Boardmasters and came back with Covid.

Dd went to Board askers with two friends.
They had to show their covid pass - either through being double vaccinated or taking and uploading a negative LFT result.
These were checked and they got a 'covid' band to wear.
They had to do one for 'early' arrival and another in the Friday.
This was to enter the 'arena' part but not the camping area.

However, the LFTs are not supervised. The festival goers are responsible for doing them and uploading their result. It is very very easy to simply ignore a positive result and click whichever result you want it to show. Also LFTs aren't that reliable for one off results.

One friend has since tested positive - on the Thursday after coming home on Monday.he had had one jab.
Dd is fully vaccinated. She has remained negative throughout and after. Her other friend, also single jab, has remained negative. They've taken both LFTs and PCR to check.

Dd and friend are also off to Leeds next week. The positive friend obviously can't go.

Between festivals and clubs it feels like Dd is firmly testing those vaccines this summer.

To be fair though, she is being careful before each festival to avoid catching covid before them - so has spent a week or more doing very little before Boardmasters, and then not been out between coming home - and before Leeds on Wednesday.

Local festival, Tramlines, wasn't very good at checking covid passes.
We know a number of 16-18 year olds who all went, all unvaccinated, and all but 2 tested positive within e week.

You are totally right @Dollyparton3 DSS is off to Leeds fest, so. Readings sister festival, it’s just a negative report of lateral flow on the nhs site. This actually doesn’t require a test, it’s just a positive or negative box for the LF tests. There will be of course those that abuse the system… just as there is with anything

My daughter just turned 18 was double jabbed ages ago for work and came back from boardmasters with covid. She sensibly did lateral flows every day and they didn't pick it up till Friday. Her weekly pcr for work picked it up weds (she got results on Friday same day as positive lft). She has had no symptoms, maybe a tiny bit under the weather. I think its enevitable really with that many people in the same place. At least she definitely won't get it at reading when she gets there after her isolation ends!

I was just reading about boardmasters 50k people.
And packed coaches leaving the site with no masks on.

Maybe pcr for all unvaxxed would make more sense and would catch the 1/75 positives

But also it needs highlighting people shouldnt go if have any cold symptoms

DS went to Boardmasters with about 20 mates. Over half of them have since tested positive for covid - a few are really quite unwell. DS had covid about 6 weeks ago so has some natural immunity I guess - anyway he is fine. DS insists they all did LFT before event and on the Friday and were negative. But by Monday many of them tested positive on LFT when they got home. I suspect Reading is going to be awash with covid next weekend - no matter what precautions they have place

It is all such a mess, these loopholes make all the stated policies meaningless.

Why would a teenager who is desperate to go to their first festival genuinely do an LFT when they can just put in the app that it's negative? I know it's selfish, but generally the young are. The only way of doing it properly is to have someone else do it on them.

I think that’s going to be the lesson we learn. That people can’t be trusted to do LFTs and they’ll need to be supervised.

We went to a festival a few weeks ago. Organisers didn’t even glance at our Covid passports when we presented them, we were just ushered straight through. I did get pinged as a result of the festival though so at least that part was working.

Ours was a test event too so you would think that they would be really on it.

Son and 6 of his friends all came down with it after going to boardmasters together. They only went for one day so weren’t on tents or on a coach - although a couple of them travelled back in the same car.

Boardmssters has been an absolute nightmare for COVID. Only bright point is that most of the teenagers will have had it before going back to college in September

So far, very few of the test events run by the government have managed to collect enough information to provide evidence for whatever it is they are looking for. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that they weren’t really on it.

Most of it seems to be deliberately designed to avoid getting any answers.

He didn’t test positive on the lateral flow until three days into having symptoms though even when testing every day. The same with his friends - they all tested positive on PCRs, some never had positive lateral flows at all.

So there could have been lots of young people who entered the festival telling the truth about negative lateral flows, but who already had it.

Did anyone go to Board Masters and not get Covid?

Doesn't seem like it @RafaIsTheKingOfClay