Sumfest boss not worried about mask-wearing mandate
Published:Thursday | May 26, 2022 | 12:09 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The anticipated large turnout of patrons from home and abroad will not affect the face-to-face in-person staging of Reggae Sumfest, says Joe Bogdanovich, chief executive officer of Downsound Records and promoter of the world-acclaimed reggae festival.
The festival, which took a two-year hiatus from the tourism capital of Montego Bay owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, returns on July 18, closing its curtains on July 23 at the Catherine Hall Entertainment Complex.
Dubbed the greatest reggae show on Earth, the week-long music festival is forecast to provide Montego Bay with earnings of between $5 billion and $6 billion from this year’s staging.
“I don’t think the return to the wearing of masks for everyone will affect the staging of Reggae Sumfest,” Bogdanovich said in a Gleaner interview.
“We have been practising to wear it over the last two years. We have gotten better at it now,” he said.
Bogdanovich was responding to a statement from Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who last week placed the nation on notice for a mandatory return to the wearing of face masks.
Jamaica is currently experiencing a fifth wave of the virus.
“It is going to be a requirement shortly for all of our citizens to wear their masks. After two years, everyone should know how to behave in order to protect themselves from the virus,” Holness said while attending a function in Montego Bay last week.
But Bogdanovich, the Reggae Sumfest promoter, said mask wearing is the best preventative way to stop the transmission of the disease, outside of vaccines.
“I think this particular strain of the COVID-19 virus is going to come and go more rapidly than you think,” the promoter predicted.
The Ministry of Education has since mandated the wearing of masks in schools in response to the latest surge in the coronavirus infection rate, which is attributed to the Omicron sub-variant BA 2, which has been confirmed on the island.