Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella(NEW YORK) — As more and more concerts, tours and festivals are getting postponed to the fall and early 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one healthcare expert thinks even that’s too optimistic.
Zeke Emanuel, who is vice provost for global initiatives and director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, tells The New York Times that he doesn’t see live shows coming back until at least fall 2021.
“Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility,” Emanuel says.
“I think those things will be the last to return,” he adds. “Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.”
Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in mid-March, essentially every artist has canceled or postponed their spring tour dates, and some summer outings have been rescheduled as well. Some festivals, including Coachella, have been moved to this coming fall, while others have scrapped 2020 events altogether and are rolling over tickets to 2021.
According to the latest numbers reported by Johns Hopkins University, over 21,600 people have died in the U.S. due to COVID-19, while over 116,000 have died worldwide.
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