Garth Brooks considers postponing stadium tour as COVID-19 cases surge across the U.S.

Garth Brooks is evaluating whether to continue his stadium tour due to the rising COVID-19 cases across the country.

The country music star’s team said that after his concerts in Kansas City and Lincoln, Nebraska, they will assess what to do with the remainder of the shows. Brooks had already scheduled a three-week break after his Aug. 14 concert in Nebraska.

“It breaks my heart to see city after city go on sale and then have to ask those sweet people and the venues to reschedule,” Brooks said in a statement. “We have a three week window coming up where we, as a group, will assess the remainder of the stadium tour this year. It’s humbling to see people put this much faith in you as an artist, and it kills me to think I am letting them down.”

For now, Brooks will not put tickets on sale for his next date, which he was scheduled to play in Sept. 4 at Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington. The sale was set to start Friday morning.

A Jackson County official earlier this week questioned whether the city should just cancel the sold out Arrowhead show altogether.

“I was sitting here thinking that—why don’t we just cancel the concert? We might save 10 [thousand] to 15,000 lives there, I don’t know,” Jackson County Legislator Ron Finley said in a meeting Monday.

The Jackson County legislature, however, cannot make that decision. Kansas City has jurisdiction over the event, Mariah Cox, a spokesperson for the Jackson County Health Department, wrote in an email.

In the meeting on Monday, Finley asked whether there were any health measures the governing body could institute for the concert since they “can’t force people to take care of themselves.” He expressed concerns over slowing the spread of the virus as COVID cases in the area continue to rise.

Finley offered suggestions such as temperature checks, providing masks at the concert for guests and encouraging residents to get tested for COVID-19 before the event.

Brooks has already played more than ten sold-out shows as part of his stadium tour, according to his website. Upcoming tour dates include Cincinnati in Sept. 18 and Charlotte in Sept. 25 which are sold out. He also has dates for Baltimore in Oct. 2 and Boston in Oct. 9.

He mentioned the Kansas City concert during his weekly Inside Studio G Facebook live on Monday. Brooks asked his audience to follow all the rules and echoed the mask wearing sentiment since, “it’s getting real sticky out there.”

“Make your own rules up too,” he said. “You can’t be safe enough. You can’t be cautious enough. Keep your space. Keep your distance.”

He told his audience not to be afraid of wearing masks at the concert. Before every show Brooks plays a video asking guests to be respectful about masks.

“Nobody is going to look at you strange, I promise.” Brooks said. “Wear your mask. Paint a G on it. Do whatever you want to do. Let’s make it fun.”

On Tuesday, the Kansas City metro area, encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, reported 12 COVID-related deaths. The area has also seen the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases reach levels not seen since early November last year.

Emergency rooms in the area are overwhelmed as local hospitals continue to deal with the high volume of COVID patients and hospitalizations. They’ve even started asking people not to go to the ER unless they have a true emergency.

Kansas City hospitals have been admitting significantly more COVID patients over the last couple of weeks, with some, including Saint Luke’s Health System, doubling the number from June to July. Several hospitals haven’t seen numbers this high since the last wave of infections at the beginning of the year.

The Star’s Lisa Gutierrez and The Associated Press contributed to this story.