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Two popular music festivals in California have been canceled again due to the coronavirus pandemic, local health officials said on Friday.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Country Music Festival were both scheduled to take place in April but were canceled, Riverside County public health officials said.
The festivals are held annually at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, located about 2.5 hours from Los Angeles, and are known to draw large crowds.
“This order is aimed at reducing the likelihood of exposure to COVID-19,” the county health department said in a statement tweeted by Public Health Director Cameron Kaiser.
The recent cancellations mark the third time that festivals have been postponed since the start of the pandemic.
Due to the pandemic, public health officer Dr Cameron Kaiser signed a public health order today (January 29) canceling Coachella Valley Music and Arts, Stagecoach Country Music festivals scheduled for April 2021. We look forward to the return of events. https://t.co/YAIn8uTea9
– Dr Cameron Kaiser (@RivCoDoc) January 29, 2021
Coachella and Stagecoach were initially postponed from spring 2020 to fall 2020. Both festivals were then postponed to April 2021, before being canceled on Friday.
The Riverside County Department of Public Health said in the order that the two festivals of “international significance” attract “hundreds of thousands of attendees.” Due to the estimated number of people who would attend both events, contract tracing of COVID-19 cases would be “impractical, if not impossible”.
Kaiser has not indicated when the events will be postponed.
As of January 29, Riverside County had a total of 271,910 cases of COVID-19, with 1,128 people currently hospitalized, according to the county health department.
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