Shocking Splendour detail slammed amid surging Covid cases
One of Australia’s top medical experts warns Covid cases will ‘supercharge’ in the wake of Splendour in the Grass while it was revealed that revellers were forced to share sips of water during a six hour wait for buses.
In what has been slammed as Australia’s version of the failed Fyre Festival, the music gig in Byron Bay wrapped up on Sunday after four days of rain, mud and controversy.
Now there are serious fears that Covid cases will skyrocket following fresh claims from party goers who were left in the wet and cold on Saturday night.
“We ended up waiting for a bus for six hours,” Tilly from Sydney said on TikTok.
“By the time we got home the sun had risen.
“There was no food in the line. People were suffering. You couldn’t sit down because of how muddy it was. Not to mention the fact that everyone’s boots were just soaked.
“The only water that was there were these little cans that were being passed back so people literally had to take the tiniest sip and then pass it along.”
Viewers on TikTok were horrified that strangers had to share water bottles.
"Sip and PASS IT ALONG???" one woman wrote.
"Yep. That or suffer," Tilly replied.
"I would’ve rather wait 6 hours for water than share with a heap of randos," another added.
In an update on Sunday, Tilly said she was feeling "very sick".
Sharing drink bottles a ‘really relevant risk’
The new allegation has left health professionals horrified.
“Anytime you start sharing drinks you’re more likely to pass on all kinds of illnesses to one another,” Dr Michael Bonning, President of the NSW Australian Medical Association, told Yahoo News Australia.
"We often think about other conditions as well as Covid that are passed on that way because people are sharing very small amounts of bodily fluids, but with lots of different people."
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“So all of that is a really relevant risk and concern.”
He added that the danger of Covid spreading was also intensified due to the festival’s younger demographic.
“Many of whom will be less likely to have had a booster for Covid and in those age groups we don't always see the highest coverage of overall vaccine coverage.”
Event to supercharge Covid cases
With TikToker Tilly already reporting nausea, headaches and an earache following the festival, Dr Bonning warns more people will fall ill in the coming days, many of those with Covid, just as cases surge across the state.
“We will supercharge through any of these kinds of events,” he said.
“We will continue to supercharge Covid cases at a time when we are asking people, with a very transmissible variant, to mask up, make sure they have had their booster and stay at home if unwell but many people have had their hearts set on going to Splendour.”
In the 24 hours to 4pm on Sunday, more than 10,000 new cases of Covid were reported in NSW.
While there were 2,329 hospitalisations, with 58 people in ICU and seven lives tragically lost.
But Dr Bonning warns the worst is yet to come.
“We expect to see cases really continue to increase over the next two to three weeks with a kind of mid-August high point which will also then coincide with high numbers of cases in hospital by that point too.”
In a statement online, organisers behind the festival apologised for the chaos on Saturday night, saying “the fact is some of the buses we ordered didn’t show up and that had a significant impact.”
"We know last night's journey home was sh***y for some of you," it said.
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