The Coachella festival is one of the most anticipated among music enthusiasts.
But in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, it was rightly postponed to October.
The news comes as the Coachella Valley region has recorded three new cases of the coronavirus as of March 9. The Riverside County Department of Public Health confirmed the new cases.
According to Dr. Cameron Kaiser, county public health officer, the infections stemmed either from travel to high-risk areas or from contact with a known case.
Two of the cases have been quarantined at home while the third is confined in a Coachella Valley hospital.
Calls had already been mounting to cancel the festival especially since the SXSW in Texas and Ultra electronic music festival in Miami were shut down because of the coronavirus.
An online petition that called for the cancellation of Coachella got more than 16,000 signatures.
“As a highly inclusive community, we are responsible to protect each and every community member, which include the ones who are elderly, fragile, or the ones who suffer from chronic diseases, cancer, immune system diseases and other forms of disabilities,” wrote Stella Young, who started the petition.
“The lives of these people should not be downplayed and we shouldn’t risk their lives since they have a higher chance of catching COVID-19 and develop critical situations that need to be hospitalized,” Young wrote.
Coachella is a huge attraction among social media influencers and it’s common for them to post selfies of themselves attending the two-weekend event.
Up to 250,000 guests flock to the Indio grounds spread across two three-day weekends.
The Stagecoach Festival featuring Carrie Underwood, at the same Indio venue, is originally scheduled for April 24-26 but may meet the same fate as Coachella.
While the cancellations make sense because of the coronavirus outbreak, it doesn’t make it any less painful for Coachella Valley’s economy. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but it may ultimately be for the best.
Replaced!