Coronavirus cancellations: Major festivals, concerts, events and attravtions postponed due to virus fears
The list of major festivals and events that have been cancelled or postponed in Australia and around the world due to coronavirus fears is growing.
As the world continues to grapple with the spread of coronavirus, the entertainment industry is being hit hard.
A number of major events and festivals have been postponed or cancelled due to the fear of the deadly virus.
Here is a list of some of the high profile events and attractions that have been affected:
TAJ MAHAL
India will close the iconic Taj Mahal to visitors from Tuesday, March 17 as part of measures to try and combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Most schools and entertainment facilities, including cinemas, have already been closed across India, the world’s second-most populous country with 1.3 billion people.
“All ticketed monuments and all other museums have been directed to be closed until March 31,” Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel tweeted.
The UN cultural agency UNESCO calls the white marble Taj the “jewel of Muslim art”. US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania visited the site in February during his official visit to India.
India has also suspended all incoming tourists, and will bar passengers of flights from the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, Turkey and the United Kingdom from March 18.
— AFP
BROADWAY
Broadway will shut down on Friday until April due to the coronavirus outbreak, as mass gatherings have been banned in New York City.
Performances close after 5:00pm (2100 GMT) Thursday and will not start up again until April 13, the Broadway League announced.
In what is the worst crisis the industry has faced since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, it’s expected that several shows will not be able to recover.
“The Minutes,” a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts that was to open Sunday night, is likely to close and never return, reports The Post.
The Broadway closure is a major blow for a tourism income stream that brought in more than $26.7 million last week alone.
The Walt Disney Company said on Thursday that it would close the Disneyland resort in Anaheim for the first time since the September 11 attacks, on account of the coronavirus pandemic.
Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure — two adjoining, but separately ticketed theme parks — will close from March 14 until the end of the month. Disney’s hotels in Anaheim will remain open until Monday.
The company stressed there had been no reported cases of the virus at the resort, but were closing as a precaution.
Disney said it would continue to pay its employees while the resort is closed. Refunds will also be issued for hotel bookings during the closure period.
The Louvre museum in Paris was shut down after staff refused to work due to coronavirus fears.
Visitors were turned away from the world’s most visited museum on March 1, local time, after about 300 staff voted “almost unanimously” to not open, AFP reported.
The 227-year-old Louvre received 9.6 million visitors last year, most of them foreign tourists, drawn to its massive array of antiquities and iconic artworks, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The Paris museum reopened three days later, with a new measure in place. Staffers will no longer be on hand to restrain crowds inside the popular exhibit, where tickets will be available for purchase online only.
Still, banks insisted “There is no proof that the coronavirus has been spread by euro banknotes,” according to a statement given to The Associated Press.
The Vatican Museum has closed and mass services will be suspended in Vatican City as Italy announced a drastic shutdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.
“Having acknowledged the Decree of the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic … we would like to inform you that, for precautionary measures, from today the Vatican Museums will remain closed to the public,” a statement from the museum said on March 9.
The Vatican Museums, a major tourist destination that houses some of the world’s most renowned Renaissance artworks, including Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, will be closed until April 3.
Popular midwinter Hobart festival Dark Mofo, held in mid-June each year, announced on Facebook that the festival would no longer be going ahead in 2020 because of the “fear” and “uncertainty” around the virus outbreak in Australia.
The annual event, held in mid-June each year, is put by the city’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). MONA’s owner, David Walsh, said he had no choice but to kill the event, which attracted more than 100,000 ticketholders last year.
NICKELODEON’S KIDS’ CHOICE AWARDS
UPDATE: We want to make sure everyone knows we are postponing Kids’ Choice Awards this year and moving it to another date out of precaution 🧡 Your votes will still be counted, we’ll have more details in the future to share
— Nickelodeon (@Nickelodeon) March 12, 2020
The ceremony was due to take place at the Forum in Inglewood, California, with Chance the Rapper was on hosting duties.
However, Nickelodeon has postponed the event in “consideration of the safety and wellbeing of every person involved with the show, which is our top priority”.
A new date will be announced “in the future,” the network promised. Voting is still open.
All St Patrick’s Day parades have been cancelled across Ireland in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced the cancellation on Monday and said further advice about mass public gatherings will be issued in the next few days.
The annual March 17 parade in Dublin is one of Ireland’s biggest tourist events, and typically draws half a million people onto the city’s streets.
SPORT
The AFL premiership season will be played without fans, while the Australian Formula One Grand Prix has been cancelled due to coronavirus.
Cricket Australia also announced on Friday morning that fans would be locked out of Australia’s three-match men’s ODI series against New Zealand.
RELATED: Coronavirus updates in Australian sport
MUSIC FESTIVALS
Coachella had been set to take place over two weekends in the California desert next month, with Rage Against The Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean headlining.
However, organiser Goldenvoice has now confirmed the festival has been postponed until October, citing advice from local health authorities.
Attracting some of the biggest names in music as well as a string of A-list attendees, Coachella will now take place on the weekends of October 9, 10 and 11 and October 16, 17 and 18. All purchased tickets will be honoured.
Stagecoach, the country music festival from the same organisers as Coachella, has also been pushed back from April to October.
Stagecoach will take place on October 23, 24 and 25.
All purchased tickets will be honoured, according to Goldenvoice, while anyone who bought a ticket will be told how to obtain a refund by March 13.
Over in the States, South By Southwest – an arts, music, film and technology festival held each year in Austin, Texas – has also been cancelled a week before its March 13 start date.
French electronic music festival Tomorrowland met the same fate after the French government took drastic measures to the recent outbreak.
The festival had been set to run March 14 to March 21 at the Alpe d’Huez Grand Domaine Ski resort in the French Alps. Ticket holders may have to wait four weeks for refunds to be processed.
The three-day electronic music festival Ultra Music Festival – which was originally locked in for March 20, 21 and 22 – was postponed to March 26, 27 and 28 before being cancelled altogether amid growing COVID-19 concerns.
The festival – which brings more than 160,000 revellers to the beachfront city of Miami, Florida – has been pushed to next year.
BTS
In light of the coronavirus surge, BTS’ management company cancelled the group’s scheduled live performances in Seoul.
BTS was supposed to kick off their eagerly awaited Map of the Soul Tour in their native Korea, with four concerts locked in from April 11-19.
“While we hope that the situation will improve, we must take into consideration the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of guests as well as our artists and the dire impact a last-minute cancellation may have on guests from overseas, production companies and staff,” read a statement from the band’s label, Big Hit Entertainment.
Fans were also told their tickets would be refunded if they’d purchased from the official ticketing agent.
PEARL JAM
(4/10) So it is with deep frustration and regret that we are forced to make this most unfortunate of announcements...
— Pearl Jam (@PearlJam) March 10, 2020
This scheduled first leg of our PJ/Gigaton tour will need to be postponed and shows rescheduled for a later date.
Only a week before it was set to kick off, Pearl Jam postponed its 2020 North American concert tour.
Confirming the news on March 9, Seattle-based band told fans conditions will probably “get worse before it gets better”.
“We’ve worked hard with all our management and business associates to find other solutions or options but the levels of risk to our audience and their communities is simply too high for our comfort level,” the band said in a statement.
GREEN DAY
Green Day’s Hella Mega tour was due to take them through Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Osaka, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo before the outbreak.
“We have unfortunately made the difficult decision to postpone our upcoming shows in Asia due to the health + travel concerns with coronavirus,” the band wrote on their site. “We know it sucks, as we were looking forward to seeing you all, but hold on to your tickets we’ll be announcing the new dates very soon.”
KISS
Kiss fans who want to shake hands with the band will have to wait. The group decided to cancel all upcoming meet-and-greets over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at the beginning of the month.
“After many discussions with experts in the field, we have been advised to temporarily cancel these events given the reality that we do this nightly for a hundred or more fans,” manager Doc McGhee said in a statement. “Shows will continue as scheduled and we look forward to resuming our time with you backstage.”
Kiss are currently in the midst of their multiyear final tour, dubbed End of the Road. The group currently has gigs booked through October and intends to play its final concert in New York at an as-yet-unannounced venue on July 17, 2021.
LOUIS TOMLINSON
The former One Direction star bowed out of a promotional tour in Italy – one of Europe’s worst-hit cities.
“I was really excited to bring the Wall Tour to Italy but the health and safety of my fans is more important than anything else,” he told fans on social media. “Hold on to your tickets.”
The show was meant to take place on March 11.
STORMZY
Rapper Stormzy, currently in the middle of his Heavy Is The Head tour told fans gigs in Asia locked in for this month would have to rescheduled.
Writing on Twitter, he said: “I was seriously looking forward to bringing the #HITH World tour to Asia and playing some epic sold out shows but due to the ongoing health and travel concerns surrounding the coronavirus, I’m regrettably having to reschedule this leg of the tour.”
“I promise I’ll be back,” he added.
The affected shows are in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, China and South Korea.
MARIAH CAREY
Mariah Carey announced on March 4 that she is postponing her upcoming concert in Honolulu amid the coronavirus outbreak, telling fans that “evolving international travel restrictions force us to consider everyone’s safety and well being”.
MADONNA
Madonna cancelled shows in Paris on March 9 due to restrictions imposed over the coronavirus outbreak, promoter Live Nation said in a statement.
Later that same week, France banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people as the death toll and number of coronavirus infections continued to rise.
Miley Cyrus has announced she is no longer coming to Australia to headline Friday’s World Tour Bushfire Relief charity concert in Melbourne.
In a statement, the singer said it was too risky to travel to Australia for the concert at Lakeside Stadium due to the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.
“Due to the recommendations of local, state, federal and international government authorities, including the Center for Disease Control, to reduce potential health risks in response to the current global health crisis, we are no longer travelling to Australia for the show,” Cyrus wrote on Twitter.
“I am so disappointed to not be there, but I have to do what is right to protect the health and safety of my band and crew. I will still be making a donation to help the victims of the Australian bush fire. I’m sorry to miss everyone in Australia, but I will be back soon.”
Incredible video of wild Jetstar job
An incredible video shows the complex 36-hour process of changing an aircraft engine in just one minute – but it is the final testing stage that is the most exciting.
Read more
Eerie post before Aussie found dead in Bali
An Australian woman took to social media just hours before she was found dead in a Bali hotel bathtub.
Read more
1000 tourists ‘violently’ ill visiting island
Close to 1000 tourists have fallen ill with a “horror” illness after visiting this idyllic island on what was supposed to be a dream holiday.
Read more