“By registering for Pride you are protecting yourself and the health of others.” “Registering to attend our event enables us to more effectively communicate any changes in local, state and federal COVID-19 safety guidelines and allows us to increase the accuracy of our contact tracing program,” according to the website. The Pride committee is also requesting attendees voluntarily pre-register before showing up at the parade or street festivals. Instead of large crowded tents with up to 20 vendors inside, this year vendors will each have individual 10-by-10-foot spaces. Other safety changes from previous years include limiting the number of people who can go backstage at events and there will be no performing artist meet-and-greets.
The festival will also be providing more than 70,000 masks for people who need them, Walczak said. “We've hired more staff and volunteers to make sure that the tables and bathrooms are cleaned on a regular process.” The festival will have 30 sanitizing stations, Pride Executive Director Rich Walczak said.
“Not that it will help them for the event, but at least we're, again, encouraging people to get vaccinated if they’re not,” Horwich said. Vaccination stations will also be available for people who have not yet had their shots. Signs will be posted throughout the festival reminding attendees about the mask policy. “But the majority of the people will be wearing masks because we’ll be encouraging that.” I would assume that some people on the floats, if they're separated from each other, will probably not be wearing masks,” he said. “Most people who are marching will be wearing masks. Horwich said parade participants will set the tone for spectators on the sidelines. I’m not sure how many of those people will be the kind of people that come to our Pride, but I guess we'll find out.” But there will be some people who refuse to wear a mask. We're encouraging, encouraging, encouraging mask-wearing as much as we possibly can. But yes, it starts with people at the parade lined up down the street. “Of course, they're hopefully going to be very spread out. An estimated 140,000 attended the most recent in-person festival in 2019. The first festival in 2009 attracted more than 15,000 spectators. Miami Beach Pride usually is held in April. 10 through 19, is the first held in person since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. “All of our staff and volunteers will be vaccinated, or they will be masked completely for anything they do inside or outside.” “We need to remind them, we need to encourage them,” Pride committee chair Bruce Horwich said. That’s the message delivered by the Miami Beach Pride committee, weeks before its first COVID-era festival and parade – when tens of thousands of LGBT people could show up to celebrate along Ocean Drive.