Coachella-surrounding areas have seen a significant increase in the number of reported cases of herpes in the after two weekends of the music festival.
An increased number of patients have logged on to a digital herpes diagnostic center, HerpAid, for quick and discreet diagnosis, TMZ reported Thursday. HerpAid confirmed they’ve seen a wild increase in prescriptions to treat the STD, even as early as the first days of the festival.
The areas listed for the increased incidence of herpes are Indio, Palm Desert and Coachella Valley, along with some increased trends in Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego.
On a normal day, HerpAid digitally serves around 12 patients. As soon as two days into the music festival, though, nearly 250 people wrote in with their STD concerns, nearly a tenfold increase from an average day. Since then, more than 1,105 cases have been reported, HerpAid told TMZ.
HerpAid allows patients to upload a photo of the affected area, and receive advice and any necessary prescription in as little as two hours. The diagnostic center did not immediately respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.
Herpes is not an uncommon virus, and is active in 67 percent of the world population, according to the World Health Organization in October 2015. At the time of the 2015 report, more than 3.7 billion people were positive for HSV-1, or the oral herpes virus, which causes lesions on the mouth and surrounding areas.
The oral virus is easily spread through mouth-to-mouth contact, according to the organization. It can be assumed the Coachella virus may have spread through kissing and other forms of skin-on-skin contact. Herpes cannot be passed through sharing food or drink, only through sexual and skin-to-skin contact, according to Planned Parenthood.
The shocking increase in numbers coincides with the conversation about sexual assault at music festivals. While Coachella festival arrests in general dropped 15 percent in 2019, according to the Desert Sun—only 98 of 120,000 festival attendees were arreseted in weekend two—music festival sexual harassment and assault statistics have increased globally.
In 2018, 43 percent of female festival attendees said they’d received unwanted sexual advances in a poll by YouGov. The poll, reported by the BBC in June 2018, also said only two percent of those incidents were reported to authorities.