Lori Lightfoot Says Has “No Regrets” About Lollapalooza, Says COVID Precautions Were “Real and Meaningful”

With much controversy surrounding the go-ahead of the recent Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, the city’s mayor Lori Lightfoot believes it was still safe to continue. In an interview with Chicago radio station WVON-AM on Wednesday, Lightfoot said that she was “well aware” of accusations that the music festival was not taking as much precaution about COVID-19 and the Delta variant that is continuing to spread.

“We checked with [attendees] every single day, multiple times a day. We had our people at the screening checkpoints. And I will tell you Dr. [Allison] Arwady, the public health commissioner, kind of went a little bit incognito — didn’t have all her paperwork right — and they wouldn’t let her in,” Lightfoot said. “Every single day, they turned hundreds of people away, either who didn’t have the right paperwork or had an expired test that wasn’t [taken] within 72 hours. That tells me there is a rigor around the protocols that they were using to screen people.”

Lightfoot was in attendance at the festival monitoring the processes and has no regrets of pushing the festival back.

This year’s lineup included headlining performances from Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, Journey, Tyler, the Creator and Post Malone.