MEXICO CITY (CelebrityAccess) — While the coronavirus has brought the concert industry to a halt in much of the developed world, organizers of a music festival in Mexico City pressed ahead with a major event in one of the world’s most populous cities last weekend.
According to the Associated Press, tens of thousands of music fans turned out for the opening day of the Vive Latino festival on Saturday, for a lineup that included Guns N’ Roses, Carlos Vives and Zoe.
Organizers told the AP that more than 70,000 tickets had been sold for the event.
While festival organizers did make some provisions to address concerns about coronavirus, including checking each person’s temperature at the entrance, inside of the festival was largely business as usual with crowds of people gathering around performance stages.
According to the AP, some guests took their safety into their own hands, and wore masks, and made generous use of hand sanitizer during the event while others were less scrupulous.
“In the end we thought that at any moment we could catch it here, in the pharmacy in the tortilla line. We decided to take the risk and come,” festival-goer Santiago Ayala, who attended with his wife and nine-year-old daughter told the AP.
Mexico City also hosted a game by the country’s top women’s football league, who played in stadiums packed with fans.
On Monday, Mexico’s health ministry announced that COVID-19 cases in the country had jumped from 53 to at least 82.
