Unvaccinated Kansas residents who went to the Garth Brooks concert need to quarantine
Unvaccinated Kansas residents who attended the Garth Brooks concert Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium — where thousands of people showed up unmasked — need to quarantine according to the state’s travel quarantine list.
Despite concerns over the rising COVID-19 cases in the Kansas City metropolitan area the sold out Garth Brooks show went on as scheduled over the weekend. More than 74,500 tickets were sold for the event, a record for an Arrowhead concert.
No one knows how many attendees were unvaccinated.
Kansas residents who went to the concert and are not fully vaccinated will have to quarantine for seven days with a negative test result or 10 days without testing after the event if they go to their state, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s travel quarantine list.
This requirement applies to people who attend “any out-of-state mass gatherings of 500 or more where individuals do not socially distance (6 feet) and wear a mask,” although there are some exceptions.
Fully vaccinated people who are asymptomatic since the event will not have to quarantine. The guidance also exempts people who have had COVID-19 in the past six months and can prove it with a positive PCR or antigen test. They should also be asymptomatic after the event.
Health officials during the University of Kansas Health System briefing on Monday, however, said that the quarantine probably is not enforcable. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at the health system, said the guidance serves more as a reminder for people to stay cautious with the virus.
“I think it’s one more thing to get people thinking about doing the right thing,” Hawkinson said. “Again, we’ve always stated, it’s not just one thing that is going to help stop the spread, it is multiple things including vaccination, masking, distancing.”
The problem, chief medical officer at the system Steve Stites said, is that they would have to enforce this guidance for events such as Royals and Chiefs games.
“I think people are nervous because the Garth Brooks concert was sold out,” Stites said. “In the Royals’ games technically you can spread out a little bit, because the stands aren’t as full, but there are times where your section’s pretty full and so the same rule would apply to that and I don’t think people are doing it for that.”
Stites also said that the transmissibility of the delta variant has mostly been traced to indoor spaces.
