LIV, a high-end Miami nightclub is offering free COVID-19 vaccines outside the club where high rollers spend up to $20,000 just for a table. The start-studded nightclub,where Super Bowl champs celebrate at parties so legendary they've inspired lyrics from Drake and Kanye West, set up pop-up COVID vaccine sites over the weekend at LIV and club Story to entice the young demographic that is rapidly filling up Florida hospitals as the delta variant rapidly spreads across Florida. The Sunshine State set another record high over the weekend.
Owner David Grutman, the king of South Beach's night life scene, who also owns a restaurant and hotel with Pharrell, said, "We are excited, we want to stay open, and we know the only way to make that happen is if people get vaccinated, so we want to make it as accessible as possible."
He partnered with CDR Health,which has administered over 2 million vaccines since the outbreak, to offer free shots outside the clubs over the weekend,with the possibility of extending it for additional weekends.
Further north in West Palm Beach,Clematis Social club owner Cleve Mash is waiving door charges for fully vaccinated partiers and offering $200 bonuses to workers who can prove their vaccine status,according to the Palm Beach Post. The overwhelming majority of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Florida are unvaccinated. Of the more than 10.5 million fully vaccinated Floridians, approximately 0.019 per cent are in a Florida hospital with COVID-19, according to the Florida Hospital Association. Twenty-five year-old Elizabeth Bahamonde remembers the last time she partied with friends at LIV.
It was just months before the pandemic and they danced the night away,shoulder to shoulder as Latin pop superstar Bad Bunny performed. Even though it as hard,she stayed home for most of the pandemic and didn't start going out again until the end of 2020,saying she was sick of the isolation. But as the clubs and restaurants across Florida grew more crowded and masks and other restrictions were lifted,she stopped clubbing. She'd been on the fence about the vaccine and had planned to get it,but got COVID two weeks ago,calling it the most horrible experience of my life.
“I wasn't anti-vax but I was waiting it out,” said Bahamonde,who said half her friends are vaccinated and half are not. Bahamonde said she's planning to get vaccinated now and thinks it's cool that LIV is using its influence to promote the vaccine to young club-goers,saying her unvaccinated friends are actually going out more. Leonardo Alonso,an emergency room physician in Jacksonville where the outbreak is especially rampant,said he's seeing “large numbers of healthy, young and middle-aged patients coming in with COVID pneumonia and alarmingly low oxygen readings.”.
New Orleans Jazz Fest cancelled due to COVID-19
With new COVID-19 cases surging in Louisiana,the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival won't be returning this year after all,organizers said Sunday.
But organizers cited current exponential growth of new COVID-19 cases in the city and region,as well as an ongoing public health emergency,in announcing that the festival will not occur as planned. .All tickets for October 13, will be automatically refunded.
Jazz Fest celebrates the indigenous music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana. The music encompasses nearly every style imaginable: blues,gospel,Cajun,Zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, folk, Latin, rock, rap, contemporary and traditional jazz, country, bluegrass and everything in between.
