Fans may be able to enjoy live music and theatre events again this year, provided vaccine uptake goes well, Dr Anthony Fauci has suggested.
In a virtual conference held by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, on Saturday, 9 January, America's top infectious disease expert gave a loose timeline for venues to reopen, which would require 70–85 per cent of the population being vaccinated.
“If everything goes right, this is will occur some time in the fall of 2021, so that by the time we get to the early to mid-fall, you can have people feeling safe performing onstage as well as people in the audience … I think you can then start getting back to almost full capacity of seating,” Dr Fauci said, according to The New York Times. “We’ll be back in the theatres – performers will be performing, audiences will be enjoying it. It will happen.”
If vaccine distribution was successful, Dr Fauci said to Maurine Knighton, the programme director for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, theatres with good ventilation and air filters may not need to put restrictions on performances by fall of this year. The only caveat, though, would be that audience members would likely still need to wear masks.
Dr Fauci also addressed performing arts professionals’ frustration that theatres must remain closed while restaurants, bars, gyms, and places of worship have been allowed to be open in some states. Dr Fauci reasoned that theatres should do more research on the ventilation quality of their spaces and look into how air quality affects transmission of Covid-19.
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“What the performing arts needs to do is to do a little bit more of what the Germans are doing,” he said, referencing a German study of an indoor concert, staged by scientists in August, that showed low transmission rates if organisers had good air ventilation, proper hygiene protocols, and limited capacity.
