Not long after Anime NYC in December it was reported a person from Minnesota had attended the convention has tested positive for Omicron. A few days later, individuals that attended with him tested positive for COVID as well. A study release by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday released a report that a combination of good air filtration, widespread vaccination, and indoor masking helped prevent the convention from becoming a superspreader event.
The amount of attendees who indicated they tested positive for COVID was similar to the positivity rate for New York City around the same time. Also, the few samples that were looked at were of the Delta variant, not Omicron.
Those that did test positive were more likely to have gone to bars, nightclubs, and karaoke clubs indicating these locations is where they might have been infected.
The CDC did say that if the convention had been later in the year, it could have been much worse as Omicron had just begun to spread around this time and wasn’t yet the dominant strain. Omicron spreads much easier than Delta.
The study relied on people who came forward with their testing which indicates a flawed data set due to it being self reported and those individuals would more likely have been more cautious indicated by their willingness to report.
The CDC came to a similar conclusion as to the New York City tracing officials in that they couldn’t find evidence of a widespread infection due to the convention.
Of the 4,560 attendees that were identified, 119 people tested positive. That’s a rate of 2.6 percent. The conventioned drew 53,000 people to it. Of those who could be matched with test and vaccination data, 85 percent had completed the primary vaccination series, 12% had received a booster dose, and 3% were partly vaccinated.
Source: Graphic Policy
