Later this month, a concert hall in Barcelona, Spain (Sala Apolo) will be the first test for a new rapid detection track and trace system that could see a return to large crowd events again.

Developed at Germans Trias I Pujol Hospital, Barcelona, the rapid coronavirus detection test – which is not based on the current PCR tests – allows for results in just 15 minutes, which means it is ideal for music festivals, football matches or theatres.

If you can ensure that a person does not have the virus present at that time, you can foresee that in the next six hours it will not be reactivated,” says Dr Bonaventura Clotet, head of the Infectious Diseases Service at Can Ruti and Director of the IrsiCaixa Research Centre.

Announced by the President of the Associació de Sales de Concerts de Catalunya (Asacc), Lluís Torrents, and the internist doctor of Can Ruti Boris Revollo, in an interview with Europa Press this past Sunday, attendees will be asked to wear masks and use alcohol gel, but once inside and with confirmed negative test results, they are free from social distancing measures and can drink alcohol.

The tests will allow them to gather real world data on interactions “in a closed space with people watching a concert, singing and dancing, and then see if there has been some kind of transmission or not,” Torrents says.

We await the results with bated breath!