Sheffield's Tramlines festival was attended by 676 people carrying Covid, data suggests

Last month, Hillsborough Park hosted the return of the Tramlines music festival.

The 40,000 capacity weekend event - July 23, 24 and 25 - was held as part of a Government trial to see how large gatherings could operate following the rollout of the vaccine.

Now, data has been released on how many positive cases were recorded through Track & Trace in the days after the festival.

The Department of Health claims an 676 were likely already infectious at the time of the event.

Meanwhile, 823 cases acquired the virus around the time of the event.

The statistics warn that the two figures should not be “summed together” because some cases are likely to be double-counted that way.

Further, in the week week leading up to August 1, Sheffield recorded 2,894 new cases of Covid and climbed to the fifth highest infection rate in the country.

The city council have been approached for comment.

Speaking two weeks after the event when the spike in cases was recorded, Sheffield’s director of public health Greg Fell said that while the event did cause a spike in cases, it did not mean it was a mistake to hold the festival.

Speaking to the BBC tat the time, he said: “The most obvious explanation, and let’s not beat about the bush, is that we held a concert in Sheffield a couple of weeks ago called Tramlines and there was some significant fringe events around Tramlines, as there always is.

"Fifty-odd thousand people came together. Some of the transmission may have been in the field. I should be categorical here: Tramlines ran an event as a Government test event and did so as safely as possible but it was never going to be risk free. And there were lots of people congregating in the Fringe events around the city centre as well.”

The data reports that 39,000 individuals with tickets attended the event, along with 4,000 members of staff and 855 with no ticket.