A common story in live music around the world as of late has been the shutdown of illegal raves during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the country’s live music restrictions, The U.K. has seen many unauthorized events take place. Police were therefore likely not surprised to receive a call about a rave at Saxon Hall in Southend over the weekend. They arrived on the scene, however, to discover that the crowd of people outside the venue were elderly and waiting in line to receive their COVID-19 vaccine – not to party.
In conversation with Southend Echo, Saxon Hall Chairman Dennis Baum spoke on the misunderstanding. The local publication also reported that while police did not have to shut down any festivities, they did help relieve traffic caused by the immunization event.
“It was really funny when the police arrived as they had been notified that there was a ‘rave’ taking place at Saxon Hall – only to find 80 and 90-year-olds on wheelchairs, zimmer frames and walking sticks, patiently queueing for their vaccinations,” Baum said.
As shown in Our World in Data, at the time of writing, the U.K. has administered a total of just over 7 million doses of one of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines. This is in contrast to the rising number of active cases in the country which as of January 25th, 2021, sits at 1,922,908 according to Worldometer.
This, in turn, has caused one of the country’s biggest festivals, Glastonbury to announce that they will not return until 2022. As vaccine rollouts have not moved as quickly as many would have liked, the return of large-scale music festivals in 2021 seems less likely each day.
Image Credit: Cátia Matos
