Is the party over Clubs as corona hotspots

Lisa Vogel studied departmental journalism with a focus on medicine and biosciences at Ansbach University and deepened her journalistic knowledge in the master's degree in multimedia information and communication. This was followed by a traineeship in the editorial team. Since September 2020 she has been writing as a freelance journalist for

More posts by Lisa Vogel All content is checked by medical journalists.

Clubs, discos, bars - they are facing the abyss in the Corona crisis. The prospects of opening up soon are slim. And a case in South Korea shows that guests are easy prey for the virus.

While there is easing in many places, clubs, discos and bars continue to look into a bleak future. Your problem: the virus has an especially easy life here.

Take Berlin as an example: of the first 263 confirmed cases, 42 were due to club visits. Pamela Schobeß from the board of directors of the Club Commission - the Association of Berlin Club Organizers - predicted at the beginning of the Corona crisis: "We were the first to close and will probably be the last to open again."

Narrow, sweaty, bad air: ideal conditions for the virus

An opinion that the virologist Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) shares. In clubs, bars and discos in particular, the coronavirus is finding perfect conditions for it to spread quickly, he says. It's tight, you sweat, yells at each other's ears from a small distance: "This is exactly this scenario in which there have already been massive infections in other countries. These are the virus hotspots - especially for the coronavirus."

In addition, the usually poor ventilation of the rooms makes it even easier for the virus. "You cannot provide ventilation there, you may only have systems that circulate it or blow it a bit. But actually these are small, narrow spaces."

That is the best condition that he could imagine for a pathogen that can be transmitted respiratory - that is, through breathing. "So the worst condition for humans. Overall, the situation is simply ideal to be able to get infected there."

Almost 200 cases of infection after visiting the club

In early May, people in South Korea had to find out how ideal the dance floor is for the virus. In the capital, Seoul, a 29-year-old person infected with corona had moved through several well-attended clubs and bars in the Itaewon nightlife district. A cluster infection developed: Almost 200 cases of infection were linked to the outbreak, and more than 65,000 people had to be tested. In South Korea - where the situation had actually eased - the fear of the virus was back.

The authorities assumed that there were several "index cases in this Itaewon cluster," says Kim Dong Hyun of the Korean Society for Epidemiology. "And the 29-year-old is definitely one of them." Index patients are usually used to describe people from whom an outbreak begins. "That means there are certainly still undiscovered, silent cases."

Dancing for many months

Little chance at a distance, difficult ventilation conditions and the constant fear of the next big outbreak: is the party in the clubs now finally over? The most sensible thing would be to let only five guests in a club for otherwise 100 visitors, says virologist Schmidt-Chanasit. "But nobody wants that and that doesn't make any sense either." He assumes that dancing, as it was before the corona pandemic, will only be possible again in many months. "Not until we have a vaccine or the pandemic is over and immunity in the population has risen."

In Berlin, meanwhile, the scene is struggling to survive. The streaming format #UnitedWeStream brings in some donations, and other alternatives are being worked on. The club commission wants to dance outside with a view to the approaching summer. Open spaces are to be temporarily open until midnight, the music to be turned off two hours earlier. For Pamela Schobeß, who runs the "Gretchen" club herself, the question arises, given the tight financial ceiling, "whether we will all still exist if we can open up again". (lv / dpa)

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