Berlin Reports 128 COVID Cases From Weeklong Festival

Manori Ravindran
·2 min read

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the final COVID figures from the week-long event, whose industry element wrapped on Wednesday.

Over seven days (Feb. 10-16), the festival found 128 positive cases from 10,938 tests. That means that of all those who were tested — a group that spans industry delegates, film teams and non-boosted audience members — 1.5% tested positive.

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On Feb. 13, around halfway through the Potsdamer Platz-centered festival, organizers reported 54 positive tests from 2,700 tests.

On Wednesday, the city of Berlin recorded 11,531 new infections, just a day after reporting just 5,630 cases on Tuesday. The figures mark the first time in two weeks that cases have dipped below 12,000.

According to the latest data from Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, Germany marked 235,626 new cases of COVID with a national 7-day incidence of 1,385 cases per 100,000 population. Overall, 75% of the population in Germany have received a complete course of COVID vaccinations, while 55.9 % have received the booster.

Berlin recorded 37,900 cases in the last seven days, and 1,034 cases per 100,000 population.

The German confab is the only major international film festival to have tested vaccinated delegates every 24 hours. Other festivals such as Cannes and Venice — the former taking place in July 2021, and the latter having yet to skip a single edition during the pandemic — had different set ups. While Cannes tested U.S. and U.K. delegates every 48 hours to enter the Grand Palais, Venice didn’t test vaccinated delegates at all, although testing stations were freely available.

In Berlin, testing stations were built inside buses around the main festival hub, and were also made available inside select hotels. The process was extremely efficient, with results from rapid antigen tests emailed in less than 20 minutes. Upon showing a negative result, delegates were given a wristband valid for the entire day, which allowed access into venues like the Grand Hyatt, where press conferences were held.

The industry-facing festival was truncated this year due to COVID, and wrapped a few days early on Wednesday evening, when awards were distributed. Spanish director Carla Simón won the Golden Bear, the top prize at Berlin, for her second feature “Alcarràs,” a moving drama about a Catalan farming family facing eviction from their land.

Catch up on Variety’s 12 top takeaways from the festival.

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