Report Test Results

  ***ATTENTION! LONG READ***

We promised that your safety is our utmost priority, and we believe that a transparent communication with regards to COVID-19 and the results of the safety measures we have taken at our event is a very relevant part of this promise and approach. 

The three most important lines of defense to avoid massive spread of infections in the aftermath of our event were:

1. Only allowing vaccinated, recovered, or tested attendees to the event. And to ask our attendees to execute another test after the event (regardless of their Covid status) and to report the result back to us
2. Mandatory masks at all times inside the building(s)
3. Enable smart contact tracing through our tailored app especially for the event in conjunction with the use of NFC chipped wristbands

First, let me be clear that such an event as we organized is for a variety of reasons a high-risk event in a pandemic. Bringing together 1000 people from – in the case of the 2021 event – 37 different countries to get very close to each other for an entire weekend, mostly inside a building, exercising an exhausting sport with heavy breathing, is the exact description of a super spreading event. That means there is no other option but to take responsibility and to do what is necessary to avoid spreading the virus.

In total 84% of our attendees were fully vaccinated or recovered, and only 16% were needed to be called to do a daily rapid test or a PCR test. It is important to point out that by all what we know by now, an antigen (rapid) test in best case has a reliable validity of max. 12 hours. Which is one of the reasons why we closed the event every day pretty early to not exceed the 12-hour time span for the average attendee, and that is why we required a daily test taken just before entering the venue. 

The COVID status and the test results were strictly and rigorously controlled, not only at the check in, but on all days at all times, to ensure the validity of such documents.

We had in total 12 attendees including instructors which were already tested positive the days before the event, and which thus stayed home. This way avoiding that they could possibly bring the virus to the event, and this drastically displays that the virus is not far away from our community.

During the event we had another two attendees which at our mobile test station got tested positive before entering the venue and consequently had to return home.

After the event we had a pretty good return of test reports by our attendees and our team. More than 25% of all attendees (and more than 45% among our team members) got tested in the 14 days after the event (a considerable percentage of them vaccinated attendees) and reported their test results back to us. In total 97,5% of all results were negative, and six results came in positive.

Of those 6 positive test results, after examining carefully the circumstances and the timeline of events, it turned out that 

1. One attendee already came infected to the event, got negatively tested every day, and got a positive test results 6 days after. No positive test results from their contacts have been reported.
2. Three attendees got tested positive more than 10 days after the event, after they had been tested negative the days after the event, thus making it highly unlikely that they got infected during or at the event.
3. Two attendees got tested positive up to 7 days after the event. Both of them had been tested negative after the event, one of them had a negative PCR test after the event, the other got tested negative every day during the event. The timeline of events makes it possible, but not necessarily likely that they got infected during or at the event. No positive contacts of them have been reported back to us.

It is worth to point out that of those 6 positive tested attendees 4 have not been vaccinated, one was partly vaccinated and one was fully vaccinated.

The use of masks at all times indoors was a condition by the German authorities to give us permission for such an event. It was vastly communicated to the attendees before the event, during the registration process and at the venue. On Friday the mandatory masks were not consistently enforced as we wanted to give common sense a chance first. After we realized on Friday that with time the use of the masks went considerably down to around 50% of the attendees, we changed the strategy on Saturday to remind everybody consistently and permanently about the use of masks, which brought it up to around 90% of the attendees using the masks inside the building.

We believe that the use of masks is an important low key measure to keep everybody safe. The fact that we did not have any massive spread of infections during/after the event – especially in comparison with other comparable events without safety measures - could be attributed to the wide-spread use of masks inside the venue in conjunction with a restrictive access strategy and consistent test strategy.

The native tailored app which has been designed especially for the event, had two main functions:

1. Targeted contact tracing – that means that once a person has been tested positive and reports the test result to us, we can track the most likely contacts of this person and filter out those which are fully vaccinated as legally they do not have to go into quarantine. This limits a lot the number of persons to be contacted and limits the number of people which possibly would need to go into quarantine.
2. Control of workshop attendance – the app allows us to control very effectively the number of attendees in each workshop as we can set maximum number of people allowed to a particular defined room. As attendees had to register before for each workshop, that made sure that no workshop has been overcrowded and also made sure that there was enough space for each attendee to keep distance, which is a critical element in pandemic times.

The event app worked very effectively to ensure keeping distance during the event, to provide us with the necessary information to evaluate our measures and steps taken and to trace contacts when needed.

The number of positive tested attendees before the event and also the numbers show above after the event show clearly how important it is to take serious health and safety measures. An international large-scale event has a high potential to spread infections far beyond the borders and to create a high number of infected and even seriously ill people in our community and beyond.

We believe that it is our responsibility as organizers to do everything possible to keep our attendees -and our team – safe. This includes to go sometimes beyond the minimum requirements the authorities require from us. Safety cannot be negotiated.