“People have been way more focused on that.A man from Minnesota who attend the Anime NYC convention at the Javits Convention Center on Nov. There have been other conventions held during the pandemic, “so this isn’t people’s first experience of having to deal with potential COVID risks while being in mass groups of people,” said Kendle Bramble, an attendee from Long Island.Īlso, “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean came out yesterday,” the 26-year-old said, referring to a new season of an anime. Some people who went to the convention remain unruffled. “The people around me didn’t have masks and we were basically-they were breathing down my neck because that’s how close everyone was.”Īfter about an hour she said: “I felt so trapped that I had to push everyone aside.” She left without being able to see the showing. “As I was standing there, I remember it just got denser and denser, and it started getting really uncomfortable and really hot, too,” Williams said. She arrived three hours early to snag a spot at the premiere of the 1000th episode of One Piece, a popular anime show, but guards had already closed off the screening room and a mass of people had started to form. Williams said she had to leave one of the most sought-after events of the convention due to overcrowding. That’s how crowded and oversold and packed it was,” she said. “Even if you were just going shopping in the upper area, or just getting food or walking around, it was just like-you couldn’t really walk freely anywhere around. The convention felt packed from the start, said Jennifer Williams, a 20-year-old student at Adelphi University. “I looked at my husband, and I said, ‘I really hope it’s not.’” “When we finally got inside, somebody had said, ‘this is going to be a super spreader,’” Merino said. Merino said a worker quickly looked at her vaccine card but didn’t look at her sons’ test results. She said the rush of people meant it was hard for organizers to carefully check vaccine cards or test results. Her sons are seven and 10 years old and weren’t yet vaccinated. “Being pushed and being squished in that crowd, all you could think about is, ‘Okay, if this person does happen to be sick and they’re breathing on me, or they happen to cough or sneeze while we’re in the close vicinity, that is going to be crazy because it’s definitely going to be spreading COVID,’” the 31-year-old said. Jollette Merino was there with her husband, trying to hold on tightly to her two young sons. At one point, the line collapsed and people began running toward the entrance, resulting in convention goers pressed “really, really close against other people,” said Ash Sze, a 20-year-old Tufts University student. On the first day, attendees say they stood for as long as three hours in the cold to get inside. The city said its test and trace teams began working Thursday to identify who the person came into contact with among the 53,000 attendees and other workers, vendors and artists. His case was separate from five Omicron cases identified across the state. New York officials on Thursday said the attendee that contracted COVID was a vaccinated Minnesota resident who attended the conference. This was Anime NYC’s plan failing to meet our fans’ demand.” Test and trace “We underestimated how many fans would come early and spend every moment of the weekend in the convention center,” Anime NYC founder Peter Tatara said on Twitter. There’s no indication yet that there was indeed a super-spreader event at Manhattan’s Javits Center, but the massive gathering underscores how even the best-laid plans for strict health protocols can wobble when tens of thousands of people amass and pent-up demand for normalcy and excitement overtake health precautions. Now, the city is faced with warning 53,000 people who came to the November convention to ask them to immediately get tested for COVID-19 after an attendee contracted one of the first confirmed infections of the Omicron variant in the U.S. While the event required vaccinations and indoor masking, attendees said people pushed past checkpoints and pressed together in large crowds unmasked.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |