Missouri’s Route 66 summer festival canceled due to COVID-19 outbreak

The city of Springfield, Missouri, on Monday announced it was canceling a major summer festival as COVID-19 hit the region.

The Birthplace of Route 66 festival, which was scheduled for August 13-14 and typically features live music and a vintage car parade, has been canceled for the second year in a row due to COVID-19. In 2019, the last year the festival took place, it drew 65,000 attendees over two days, and it is expected to welcome 75,000 this year, according to the city.

“With our region’s low vaccination rate against COVID-19, the resulting outbreak of infections is overwhelming our hospitals and making our community sick,” said Cora Scott, director of public information and engagement civic for the city, in a press release. “We think it’s just not safe to bring tens of thousands of people from all over the world into this community for any reason.”

Missouri’s immunization rate is lower than the national average. As of Monday, 46% of residents had received at least one dose and 40% were fully immunized, according to the CDC, compared with 56% of all Americans who received at least one injection and 48% who are fully immunized.

In Greene County, where Springfield is located, vaccination rates are still below the state average. According to data from the state’s health department, only 39% of residents of Greene County have received a dose of the vaccine and 34% are fully immunized.

Missouri is on a growing list of states that have seen an increase in infections, with new cases increasing 64% in the past two weeks, from 796 to 1,304, with a total of 9,100 cases per week, according to data from the Department of Health and Social Services. . Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Nevada lead the country with the highest weekly per capita case rates, which translates to more than 100 infections per 100,000 population. New COVID-19 hospital admissions also increased by 40% over the same two-week period.

In Springfield, which is in the southwest of the state, the outbreak is straining hospitals and frontline workers say patients are getting sick faster.

Erin Baker, a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, told ABC News the hospital has seen a slight increase in the number of patients who need to be intubated.

“A lot of healthier people, young people in their twenties, thirties, forties, get this delta or COVID variant much faster,” Baker said. “Their health is deteriorating very quickly.

Last month, the state’s health department warned that the delta variant, which is more transmissible than the original form of the virus and is particularly dangerous for unvaccinated and partially vaccinated people, had “become prevalent in communities of Missouri “.

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos and Matt Foster contributed to this report.