Bucharest tests large scale music event amid pandemic concerns

The Romanian capital hosted over the weekend the first large scale music festival since the pandemic started over a year-and-a-half ago, writes Cristian Gherasim, Bucharest correspondent.

For music lovers, the event proved to be a glimmer of hope, bringing back a pre-COVID feeling, before the pandemic restrictions canceled or limited such large scale gatherings.

Over the course of this year, Romania gradually opened up to music festivals scheduled to take part in 2020 but pushed back when the pandemic hit and canceled such gatherings.

Close to 40.000 people from both Romania and abroad coalesced over the weekend to attend the SAGA Festival – an international electronic dance music event making its debut in the Romanian capital.

The event organizers allowed access based on strict COVID requirements necessary for these kind of gatherings: the EU Digital Covid Certificate- proof that the person has either been vaccinated, received a negative test result, or recovered from Covid-19, a recent PCR test no older than 72h, or a test done on the spot prior to entry valid for 24h.

The festival tested the authority’s ability to cope with the influx of people coming for the music event and to make sure that the large gathering of festival goers doesn’t add to the number of new COVID cases.

In the first case, Bucharest authorities proved unable to streamline traffic, resulting in the northern part of the Romanian capital experiencing standstill traffic for several hours, with many locals voicing their anger against local authorities. A video posted on social media shows a city brought to a halt by traffic restrictions and authorities’ inability to cope with the influx of people.

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Bucharest is trying to deal with a spike in the number of COVID cases after the quiet summer months. Over the past weeks Romania’s capital city saw an increase in the number of cases as ICU beds are quickly filling up. Countrywide, daily new Covid cases have jumped from less than 100 during the summer, to over 2,000.

The festival is scheduled to return next year as this year’s edition was well received by music lovers.

But in the meantime local and national authorities need to weather what looks increasingly as a 4^th wave of the pandemic taking hold across the country.

Romania has one of the lowest vaccination-rates in the EU, pushing authorities to sell an excess of around two million vaccines, and donate close to another one million - to avoid unused stocks from hitting their expiration date. Last week, authorities sold another batch of jabs, over 1.5 million to South Korea.

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