Over 130 attendees at Utrecht festival already had coronavirus; Event was a July super-spreader

At least 130 attendees of the Verknipt techno festival in Utrecht already had the coronavirus when they attended the festival, health service GGD region Utrecht concluded in source and contact tracing. Some 1,100 of the 20 thousand people who attended the festival earlier this month, tested positive for Covid-19 afterwards, the Volkskrant reports.

This major coronavirus outbreak was therefore not caused by a single person, Putri Hintaran, infectious disease control doctor at GGD region Utrecht, said to the newspaper. Just over a third of the people the GGD did source and contact tracing for, were likely already infected when they arrived at the event, she said.

The GGD found no indications of large-scale fraud with testing for access. The health service believes that the festival attendees were not aware that they were infected with the coronavirus when they came to the event. This may be due to the long validity of the negative tests at the time.

When the festival was held, test results were valid for 40 hours. It's now been reduced to 24 hours, like the Outbreak Management Team advised.