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Coachella 2020 Is Postponed Amid Coronavirus Spread

The music and arts festival brings 125,000 people to a California valley each year.
Festivalgoers at the 2019 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Festivalgoers at the 2019 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.

Coachella, the music festival that attracts thousands of tanned bandanna-wearers to southern California each spring, has been postponed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, organisers announced Tuesday.

Stagecoach, a country music festival held at the same venue, will also be rescheduled.

Organisers said the events would be moved to October.

Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean were slated to headline the event that was scheduled to be spread over two weekends, April 10-12 and April 17-19. The same artists reportedly plan to perform at the festival’s new October event.

Officials announced three new cases of coronavirus in the Coachella Valley on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Riverside County to six.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is the latest major event to have its plans changed due to the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. On Friday, Austin, Texas, canceled South by Southwest, the media festival that was scheduled to kick off on March 13. Event organisers across the country have been canceling conferences, festivals and other occasions out of concern for public health.

Testing efforts across the US have been sluggish and the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus has surpassed 600, reported The Associated Press.

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman contributed reporting.

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