Festival with Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood sparks COVID outbreak, Colorado officials say

A country music festival in Colorado that featured many popular performers has led to a COVID-19 outbreak, officials say.

Officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment say four staff members and 13 attendees from the Country Jam festival in Grand Junction got COVID-19 after attending the three-day event.

The June 24-26 outdoor music festival featured Luke Combs, Toby Keith and Carrie Underwood as headliners. Ashley McBryde, Tanya Tucker and Kip Moore were among the other singers who performed.

Organizers of Country Jam have not publicly commented on the COVID-19 outbreak, nor have the three headline performers.

About 24,000 country music fans attended the festival each day, according to The Daily Sentinel. It’s the largest country music festival in Colorado, the newspaper reported.

Attendees at the festival were urged to wear face masks, but they were not required. The festival asked patrons to keep a minimum of 3 feet of social distancing from people not in their group.

The festival also featured a COVID-19 vaccine clinic, according to The Daily Sentinel.

A couple from Arvada, Colorado, believe they got the virus from the festival. The vaccinated couple told KMGH it was the first concert they had attended since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“It was so much fun. We’ve been on lockdown for over a year,” Chris Biondini told the station.

Mesa County, where the festival was, has more cases of the delta variant than any county in Colorado, according to Kaiser Health News.

The health department did not specify whether the cases were of the delta variant or how many people have been hospitalized.

“We’re making national news for our COVID variant and the CDC is here investigating, but we have a huge festival where people aren’t masking,” Dr. Rachel LaCount told KHN. “Are we going to get herd immunity over here just because everyone’s going to get it? I mean, that’s probably going to happen at some point, but at what cost?”

Many major music festivals will occur throughout the U.S. this summer and fall, including Lollapalooza in Chicago, Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee and Austin City Limits in Texas.

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