Berlin Film Festival Records More Than 60 Positive Covid Cases In First Three Days
13.02.2022 - 15:15
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: The Berlin Film Festival, which got underway on Thursday evening, has recorded more than 60 positive Covid results from its testing procedures, organizers have confirmed to us.
A festival spokesperson said: “Since the beginning of the festival we have only detected eight cases of positive tests among the film teams. The Berlinale’s test buses, available for both accredited and audience, did approximately 2,700 tests and had only 54 positive tests.”
The festival continued: “In order to stop possible chains of infections, we are evaluating every case and situation thoroughly, tracking all contacts and identifying possible risk situations. We are still in pandemic times and obviously positive tests are still a reality in our daily lives. It is good to hear that the figures of positive tests are really low. With 2% of positive tests the figures are less than the average percentage of positive tests around Berlin.”
While the 2% figure is reassuring, some may be alarmed by the high overall number of positive cases and the potential for spreading.
Germany is currently experiencing a peak in the highly transmissible Omicron variant. The country registered 151,000 cases yesterday (a five day low) and 122 deaths. There are currently 3.4M active cases in the country but only 0.1 percent of those people are in a serious or critical condition.
By comparison, Cannes claimed last June that it was recording an average of three positive Covid results per day and doing up to 3,000 tests per day. The Venice Film Festival, which took place last September, carried out 4,500 total Covid tests in 11 days, returning only three positive results, organizers told us.
However, it’s also important to note that the Covid context and testing