3 Years Absent, Coachella Will Be Held Again From Today To Sunday

Coachella event before being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic (Twitter @coachella)

JAKARTA - The Coachella music festival in California, United States, officially starts from Friday to Sunday (15-17 April) for the first time since 2019.

Quoted from AFP on Friday, this year's music event featured Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and The Weeknd with the Swedish House Mafia EDM star as the festival's headliner.

For information, Coachella 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic starting to plague the world, including the United States, where the positive cases increased significantly.

During that time, there have been cancellations, reshuffle of the lineup of performers, to rescheduling, including for Coachella 2021.

Returning after a three-year hiatus, Coachella is seen as a pioneer for a majestic music industry that is still surviving after the decline of the ongoing pandemic.

After other large-scale festivals including last year's Lollapalooza required proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 results, Coachella announced it would not require any such mitigation measures, including masks or social distancing.

The festival is held mostly outdoors, welcoming around 125,000 visitors from within and outside the country, who also enliven lodging and other destinations around the festival.

However, Coachella ensures that they care about the health of their visitors. The festival will provide two COVID-19 test locations in the festival area.

Senior Public Information Representative for Riverside County Department of Public Health, Jose Arballo, said there would also be a supported COVID-19 testing facility near where Coachella is taking place.

"Whenever you have a large group of people gathered in a public place, there is some problem there - but we hope that more people will be vaccinated ... and more people will wear masks," he told AFP.

"If people don't feel well, even if it might cost them financially, we hope they can forget about it (the festival)."

Arballo said the number of cases in Riverside County had "increased in recent weeks".

"But people will still come from all over the country and other places in the world where maybe the case rate isn't that low," he said.

Arballo also noted that unreported home self-testing for COVID-19 may have skewed case-level data downwards, and anticipates that Riverside County will be able to assess the festival's public health impact in the middle of next week -- just before the festival's second series.

Nationwide, COVID-19 cases fell sharply from earlier in January but have only recently begun to rise, with the United States averaging about 38,000 cases a day, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).