SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Typically when people return from Burning Man, they report respiratory issues from the fine dust out in the desert, but this time around they're reporting cases of COVID-19.
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There aren't official numbers, but it's obvious through social media posts that a large number of Burning Man attendees returned from the nine-day festival with COVID-19.
The 80,000 people who attend the event mostly spend their time outside, but that doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference in transmission. "I'm not at all surprised," Dr. George Rutherford, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology and Health Administration at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, told KCBS Radio.
"I would be surprised if people got very sick, the young population, probably most of them are vaccinated," he added.
Unlike some festivals post-COVID-19, a coronavirus vaccination was not a requirement to attend the Nevada Black Rock Desert art celebration.
Rutherford said there's also talk of a general "valley fever" going around, so festival-goers should make sure to test. "It's simple to test for COVID," he said. "If you don't have COVID and you have a persistent cough and fever and things like that then that's another consideration."
Burning Man organizers — known as the Burning Man Project — have not yet provided numbers on how many positive cases they recorded.
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