Photo by Jake May


In August, German scientists hosted a 1200-person indoor concert in Leipzig, Germany, aimed at measuring the effects of indoor events of that scale on the spread of COVID-19. A study has been published analyzing the findings. According to a report in the New York Times, “findings from a test event with 1,200 attendees suggest that indoor concerts have a ‘low’ impact on infection rates, providing they are well ventilated and follow hygiene protocols.”

“There is no argument for not having such a concert,” explained Dr. Michael Gekle, who was part of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg team that conducted the study (quote via Times report). “The risk of getting infected is very low.”

The report noted how the study itself was conducted: “To gauge contacts during the concert, which was held in Leipzig, volunteers were first tested for the virus and given temperature checks before entering the venue. Each person was given a hand disinfectant laced with a florescent dye and a digital location tracker, and different social distancing scenarios were simulated over 10 hours. They included breaks for attendees to go to the bathroom and to simulate buying food and drink from vendors. Participants were not distanced in one scenario, partially distanced in a checkerboard formulation in a second, and strictly distanced in a third.”

The Times also noted that the study was been posted online and announced in a press conference last Thursday, but it has not yet gone through the peer review process.

“Some experts expressed skepticism about the results, saying they needed to be replicated and reviewed, and that more information was needed about how researchers used the modeling,” noted the report. “Dr. Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine, said the findings were potentially ‘useful,’ but that it might be difficult to replicate the controls that the researchers had implemented at many real-life events.”

Read the full Times report here. To read the full study itself, click here.