How to Navigate Large Gatherings During the Current COVID-19 Surge

• Concerns are rising about large public gatherings such as concerts and sporting events as COVID-19 cases continue to increase.
• Experts say a motorcycle rally in South Dakota and a 4-day festival in Chicago earlier this month could end up being superspreader events.
• According to experts, you can safely attend such large public events if you are vaccinated, stay away from the most crowded areas, wear a mask, and use hand sanitizer.

Seeing your favorite band or sports team play can be a risky adventure during the current COVID-19 surge.

Nonetheless, there are some ways you can protect yourself from contracting a serious case of COVID-19 if you decide to go to a large public gathering.

As vaccination rates rose and COVID-19 infection rates slowed earlier this year, lockdowns eased and more large public events were permitted to go forward.

However, the recent widespread prevalence of the Delta variant increases the risk of attending mass gatherings, particularly indoors, according to Dr. Adam Brown, the chief impact officer and COVID-19 Task Force chair at Envision Healthcare, a national medical group.

“For individuals who are unvaccinated, large indoor gatherings continue to be a very high risk activity, especially if those individuals are not wearing a mask,” Brown told Healthline.

Dr. Aimee Ferraro, a public health and epidemiology professor at Walden University in Minneapolis, said that being in a large crowd poses a higher risk of infection, both indoors and outdoors.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that “the largest droplets [of the novel coronavirus] settle out of the air rapidly, within seconds to minutes. The smallest very fine droplets, and aerosol particles formed when these fine droplets rapidly dry, are small enough that they can remain suspended in the air for minutes to hours.”

Ferraro noted the spread of the virus outdoors can also depend on the wind, especially in settings where people are close together and singing or shouting.

“There’s a close mixing of tens of thousands of people you don’t know and who you don’t know if they are infected or not,” Ferraro told Healthline.