Thumper cancel Whelan's gig this week due to rising COVID-19 cases

Lifestyle & Sports
30 Nov 21

Thumper and Damien Dempsey play The Slane Sessions at Slane Distillery in association with Slane Irish Whiskey.

Thumper say that refunds are available at the point of purchase for Thursday's cancelled show.

Thumper have decided to pull out of their show at Whelan's this Thursday, December 2, citing rising cases of COVID-19.

In a post on their Twitter account, the band explained that the cancellation was due to the raucous nature of their live performances mixed with concerns about the spread of the virus.

"Due to rising covid numbers and the nature of the show we want to deliver you we have decided to pull our Whelans show this Thursday," the statement reads.

"Most venues are being run like clockwork to keep its patrons and artists safe and that's certainly the case in Whelans. Unfortunately our shows tend to devolve into hedonism so it's best to sit this one out for now. We'll be announcing a replacement date soon."

Their 2022 tour of Europe remains unaffected by this announcement at the time of writing.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Refunds available at point of purchase ☹️ <a href="https://t.co/O4VqXNvEq8">pic.twitter.com/O4VqXNvEq8</a></p>— T H U M P E R (@thumper666) <a href="https://twitter.com/thumper666/status/1465363461341433858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The news from Thumper comes as a new variant of COVID-19 has been identified recently.

Dubbed the Omicron Variant, it has led to new travel restrictions across the globe, including the breaking story today that all arrivals into Ireland must now have a negative test for the virus to enter the country from Friday.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Dr. Ayoade Alakija of the Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance criticised the prior travel restrictions that effected travel from African countries where the virus had been identified. She added that "vaccine hoarding" by wealthier nations caused the new variant.

"Why are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents? Nobody's looking away Belgium or Israel? It is wrong," she said.

"It's an outrage because we knew we were going to get here.

We knew this is where the hoarding, the lack of IP (intellectual property) waivers, the lack of co-operation on sharing tech, and sharing know-how – we knew this was a crossroads that it was going to bring us to. It was always going to get us more dangerous variants. Why are we acting surprised?"