Hundreds of thousands of bikers expected to descend on South Dakota for annual Sturgis festival as Delta variant spikes in the state

• About 700,000 bikers are expected to attend the 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.
• Their presence at the rally comes as the Delta variant continues to surge in the state.
• Health officials on Wednesday said cases in South Dakota jumped by about 68% just in the last week.

Hundreds of thousands of bikers are making their way to South Dakota this week for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, despite threats of the Delta variant rising in the state.

Health officials on Wednesday said cases in South Dakota jumped by about 68% just in the last week. About 48% of the state's total population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

That puts South Dakota on about the same level as the United States as a whole. About 50% of all US individuals are fully vaccinated, JHU data shows.

But these hundreds of thousands of bikers are coming from all over the country. And this year, about 700,000 bikers are expected to attend the rally, according to the Washington Post.

Last year, more than 450,000 people visited South Dakota to participate in the biker festival. Because of the shutdown of most large events nationwide, the rally gained recognition for attracting one of the largest crowds in the country at the time.

Bikers last year flouted coronavirus safety measures like social distancing and mask-wearing.

Days before the 2020 rally, residents in Sturgis and local officials pushed for its cancellation, knowing that the number of confirmed cases in South Dakota was rising at the time. More than 60% of residents said in a survey that they hoped the event would be postponed.

At least 649 cases were found to have been linked to the Sturgis rally. The true number is likely to be much higher, as contact tracing proved difficult once all the bikers returned to their home states. Research published a month after the rally found that as much as hundreds of thousands of new COVID-19 cases could be linked back to the event.

This year, there's no mask mandate in place, a spokesperson for the city of Sturgis told the Washington Post. But there will be free testing, masks, and hand sanitizer available for participants.

"The people visiting have said they come from states that have been in lockdown for so long and they just want to have a normal summer vacation without the worries of last year," Sturgis spokesperson Christina Steele told the Post. "People here don't want to talk about covid. They want to have a good time."