Photo/Illutration Dancers show off energetic dance steps during the Awa Odori festival at the Aibahama performance venue in Tokushima city on Aug. 15. (Hajime Sugita)

TOKUSHIMA--A famed dance festival that was held for the first time in three years on a full-scale basis in August here resulted in a COVID-19 superspreader event among participants, the organizers reported on Sept. 22. 

About a quarter of the participants, including dancers, of this year’s Awa Odori festival held from Aug. 12 to Aug. 15 were infected with the novel coronavirus, the organizers disclosed.

The total number of new COVID-19 cases reported between Aug. 11 and Aug. 25 was 819 of the estimated 3,425 people among the 86 groups that returned questionnaires about infections to the organizers.

The Awa Odori festival organizing committee believes, however, that the actual number of cases was higher as some dance groups didn’t reply to its post-festival survey.

Last year’s event was scaled down to prevent infections.

According to the organizing committee, anti-infection rules in its guidelines were largely observed by participants.

However, some of the guidelines, including avoiding the “sanmitsu” (the three Cs of closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings) in dressing rooms, were not strictly adhered to.

Between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9, the committee surveyed the 123 dance groups that participated in the Awa Odori this year.

It asked them the number of daily new COVID-19 cases found among their members between Aug. 11 and Aug. 25. The Awa Odori eve event was held on Aug. 11.

The survey also asked the groups how they observed the anti-infection guidelines. A total of 86 groups, or 70 percent of all, responded.

The survey found that the number of new COVID-19 cases among the groups’ members spiked from Aug. 16, the day after the event ended.

The number peaked on Aug. 17 at 220. The daily count remained in single digits on or after Aug. 22.

“We don’t know if all new cases reported by the groups were attributable to the Awa Odori event,” an official of the organizing committee said. 

The survey found that almost all groups observed the guideline’s anti-infections rules that applied to dance rehearsals.

These rules included “Members should not participate in dance rehearsals when they don’t feel well,” and only between zero to 1 percent of the groups replied that they didn’t follow them.

In contrast, among rules on how participants should behave on the days of the events, as many as 11 percent of the groups said they didn’t follow one that required their members to “change into costumes at home and refrain from using dressing rooms.”

In addition, 6 percent of the groups didn’t observe the rules such as “avoid the three Cs and provide adequate ventilation in dressing rooms,” “wash hands and sanitize hands and fingers before meals,” and “practice social distancing even at break times.”

An expert on curbing infections who is an instructor at Tokushima University and supervised the creation of the guidelines criticized the organizers. 

The instructor noted that this year’s Awa Odori differed from last year’s scaled-down festival, including holding a “so-odori” dance (gala dancing where many participants dance together) as well as dancing on streets along a river.

“Unless someone takes measures, infections will occur,” the expert said. “I wanted more proper measures to be taken.”

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