Coachella music festival cancelled under new state order

Stagecoach, a popular country music festival, has also been cancelled due to the decree

Visitors cheer at the UK's Glastonbury Festival, one of the many music festivals to be cancelled this year, along with Coachella and Stagecoach in the US, June 30, 2019. AFP 

Two major springtime music festivals, Coachella and Stagecoach, have been cancelled under a local county order in California, extending the historic suspension of large gatherings due to the pandemic.

Dr Cameron Kaiser, the public health officer for Riverside County where the festivals take place, tweeted the news on Friday evening.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which had been scheduled for two weekends in mid April, is a popular attraction for young people and features big names in the music industry.

The Riverside County order justified the cancellations by saying that “hundreds of thousands of attendees from many countries" come to the events.

This is the third time Coachella has been cancelled due to the pandemic after both the April and the rescheduled October events were cancelled in 2020.

Stagecoach Country Music Festival, scheduled for April 23-25, is another sprawling gathering featuring mainstream and indie stars in rock, alternative and country music.

"We look forward to when the events may return," Dr Kaister wrote on Twitter.

California lifted its stay-at-home order weeks after becoming the latest epicentre of the US pandemic, with hundreds of deaths each day in Los Angeles County. The state has also detected the UK Covid-19 variant and is investigating another possible variant originating in the state.

There has not been an announcement detailing when the events will be rescheduled.

"If Covid-19 were detected at these festivals, the scope and number of attendees and the nature of the venue would make it unfeasible, if not impossible, to track those who may be placed at risk,” the county order from Dr Kaiser read.

It declared that the decision to cancel was "based on concerns of a fall resurgence of Covid-19 both within the county of Riverside and worldwide.”

The company behind Coachella and Stagecoach, Goldenvoice, said in 2020, "a year without Coachella and Stagecoach is hard for us to comprehend, but we have every intention of returning in 2021. [...] We can't wait to be together in the desert again when it is safe."

The move follows the cancellation of the 2021 Glastonbury Festival, another major international festival in the UK.