The Coachella festival, one of the most anticipated dates on the music calendar that was scheduled to take place next month, has reportedly been postponed to October in light of the coronavirus outbreak.
Sources have also told Entertainment Tonight that the festival is being postponed. DailyMail.com has reached out to the organizers of the music festival for comment.
Authorities in the Coachella Valley region confirmed three new cases of the coronavirus on Monday.
The cases were confirmed by the Riverside County Department of Public Health.
Dr. Cameron Kaiser, county public health officer, said the three infections were either the result of travel into areas where COVID-19 has been confirmed or contact with a known case.
Two of the individuals have been isolated at home, Kaiser said, while the third is being cared for at a Coachella Valley hospital.
There were growing calls for the festival to be shut down, particularly after the coronavirus outbreak led to the cancellation of SXSW in Texas and Ultra electronic music festival in Miami.
An online petition to shutter Coachella this year quickly garnered more than 16,000 signatures.
‘As a highly inclusive community, we are responsible to protect each and every community member, which include the ones who are elderly, fragile, or the ones who suffers from chronic diseases, cancer, immune system diseases and other form of disabilities,’ wrote Stella Young, who started the petition.
‘The lives of these people should not be downplayed and we shouldn’t risk their lives since they have a higher chance catching COVID-19 and develop critical situations that need to be hospitalized,’ Young wrote.
LA County declares health emergency amid coronavirus surge
Coachella is a hugely popular festival with social media influencers, who preen in selfies during the two-weekend event.
Each spring hundreds of thousands of festival-goers descend on the grounds of Indio over two three-day weekends.
It typically draws 250,000 people over two weekends.
The country-flavored Stagecoach Festival, featuring headliner Carrie Underwood, is scheduled for April 24-26 at the same Indio venue.
It is likely that if Coachella is postponed, the Stagecoach Festival would also be moved back to a later date.
This year Rage Against The Machine, Frank Ocean and Travis Scott are set to headline.
If the reports of a postponement are accurate, this would be the second major event in the region that has been either postponed or canceled due to the emerging pandemic.
Professional tennis organizers announced the postponement of the BNP Paribas Open in Southern California.
The announcement has jolted the Coachella Valley’s economy during peak tourist season in the desert.
The two-week tournament’s economic impact to the area topped $400million in the most recent survey done in 2017.
It was set to run Monday through March 22.
