The Art With Me festival held in Mexico last month — which has drawn comparisons to Burning Man — has been linked to a number of new COVID-19 cases in New York.
According to the Daily Beast, private COVID-19 testing company Checkmate Health Strategies has traced more than half of its recent positive tests to guests of the four-day Art With Me festival in Tulum.
“I would say that 60 to 70 percent of my positives in the last couple weeks in New York City have been a direct result of either people coming back from Art With Me — or who have been directly exposed to someone who attended Art With Me,” Checkmate founder Eleonora Walczak told the outlet.
The festival took place in mid-November, hosting art workshops and guided meditation by day followed by allegedly maskless partying at night. While the event’s organizers issued COVID safety guidelines prior to the event, attendees told the Daily Beast that little to no safety measures were observed over the course of the four-day festivities.
“I have nothing good to say about this event,” said one guest who tested positive for the virus following the event. “All I will say is that there was not one mask and I got more sick than I ever did in my entire life after that party.”
Back in Mexico, meanwhile, an administrator at the Hospital de Tulum reported “multiple people” who attended the Art With Me event, primarily North and South American tourists, had been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19.
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