4,000 People Allowed to Attend Tennessee Concert at Old Prison Amid Coronavirus Spread

Up to 4,000 people will be permitted to attend a prison concert on Saturday at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The concert is part of the "Live at Brushy" series and will be headlined by American country singer, Chase Rice. According to a Facebook post by the penitentiary, the concert will feature a number of different safety protocols, including decreasing the maximum occupancy from 10,000 to 4,000.

Some of the other safety precautions the penitentiary is taking for the upcoming concert include temperature checks for all guests and staff upon arrival, free hand sanitizer in several different locations throughout the venue and "all vendors and staff will be required to wear masks and gloves when interacting with guests." The penitentiary will also be selling bandanas in the gift shop, for guests to use as face masks and the venue's "wide open yard" will provide open space so concertgoers can properly follow social distancing guidelines.

Gates for the concert are scheduled to open at 6 p.m. local time on Saturday with the music beginning at 8 p.m.

The Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, previously called the Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex, operated from 1896 to 2009, but became a tourist attraction in 2018, including features such as a museum, a distillery, a restaurant and a concert venue. The prison is known for housing well-known criminals such as James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.

The 4,000-attendee concert comes as the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, continues to spread across Tennessee. According to the Tennessee Department of Health, there were at least 932 confirmed cases over the past 24 hours, as well at 14 deaths, which brings the state totals to 37,235 cases and 556 deaths.

In addition to the increase in confirmed cases of the novel virus in Tennessee, the state is also seeing a decrease in hospitalization capacity. According to the state's department of health, there is currently only 20 percent availability for hospital floor beds and 21 percent availability for ICU beds.

The new coronavirus continues to spread across the U.S. and a number of states, such as Arizona, California and Texas have seen spikes in cases over the past few weeks. According to a tracker provided by Johns Hopkins University, there are currently over 2.3 million cases across the U.S. as well as at least 122,020 deaths.

Newsweek reached out to the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary for comment on the upcoming concert but did not receive a response in time for publication.