NEW ORLEANS — Dozens of people who attended a recent swingers convention in New Orleans have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the organizer.
“Naughty in N’awlins” producer Bob Hannaford said he knows of 41 attendees who have the coronavirus and a couple of them got really sick.
“If I could go back in time, I would not produce this event again. Even though most of the 41 positive cases have mostly been asymptomatic or very mild cases,” Hannaford admitted. “The reason I wouldn’t is that I know of two people who had a tougher time and they were suffering. One of them, a good friend of mine, was hospitalized in serious condition.”
Hannaford, owner of Naughty Events, said in a lengthy post on his website that he agonized for months over if -- and when -- to hold the annual event.
After canceling the event twice due to coronavirus concerns, Hannaford said they felt November would be safe.
“As November neared, the numbers in New Orleans kept trending down, way down. By mid-October, New Orleans was one of the safest big cities in the US. The restrictions got lighter and lighter, more restaurants and bars reopened,” Hannaford said.
They asked anyone at high-risk due to age or health problems to stay home.
“We fine-tuned Naughty N'awlins 2020 to follow, and in some cases exceed, all safety guidelines mandated by the city and state,” the website stated before the event.
Hannaford said half the 300 people who attended had the antibodies and many of the others tested negative right before the NOLA event.
“We went to extraordinary measures for check-in and instituted a touchless process with required temperature checks, social distancing in line, and sanitizing upon check-in,” Hannaford said. “We issued wristbands in one color to indicate who had antibodies and therefore was not contagious. We issued a second color to those that showed us a very recent negative COVID-19 test.”
Hannaford said they required masks in all public places – except when eating or drinking -- and didn’t allow groups of 10 or more to congregate.
He blames complacency for the outbreak.
They learned through contact tracing that many of the people who tested positive admitted they let their guard down the last couple of days.
Over the summer, New Orleans was one of the hardest hit COVID hot spots in the country.
The current positivity rate in New Orleans is 3.7 percent with nearly 16,000 cases.
