Two people died after suffering serious health complications during or after Electric Daisy Carnival's two-day debut in Medellín, according to reporting on the city health authority's consolidated medical tally. The event took place on 10 and 11 October at the Atanasio Girardot sports complex, bringing the festival to Colombia for the first time.
El Colombiano reported that Medellín's health secretary, Natalia López Delgado, said medical teams recorded 193 attendee consultations for a range of health issues across the weekend. Of those, 107 involved intoxication linked to psychoactive substances. Seven people were transferred to medical centres, and two later died. El Tiempo separately reported the same 107-intoxication figure, attributing it to the city health secretariat.
Those figures are a medical-services balance, not a final account of what caused every illness. El Colombiano reported that some people were assessed for seizures associated with stage lighting and for complications involving pre-existing health conditions. The outlet also described the two deaths as the subject of preliminary investigative findings, rather than a final forensic conclusion.
According to El Colombiano, investigators initially linked one death to a possible drug overdose without naming a substance. The newspaper reported that early examinations in the two cases pointed to a mixture of substances and alcohol, while final findings from Colombia's forensic authorities were still awaited in at least one case. That distinction matters: neither source supports treating the preliminary accounts as a completed determination of cause.
The event's scale makes the public-health response part of the story. El Colombiano reported that organisers Páramo Presenta put attendance at 94,000 across both days, including 47,000 people per day. The newspaper also reported a security operation involving 340 police officers, 40 army personnel, city public-space staff and operational managers across four stages. Those are organiser and event-operation figures reported by the outlet, not an independent attendance audit.
EDC Medellín was presented as the festival's first edition in South America. El Tiempo described it as a first South American outing in Medellín and said the event drew more than 90,000 people. El Colombiano described it as the first time the event had been held in Colombia. The sources therefore agree on the broad scale of the debut, even though their attendance wording is not identical.
The available reporting does not establish a single failure, nor does it explain what substances were involved in every intoxication. It does establish that medical teams treated a substantial number of people and that two deaths followed serious complications. That is the factual record the city has released so far.
The published accounts do not give a day-by-day breakdown of medical contacts or identify the substances involved in the reported intoxications. They also do not say that every hospital transfer was connected to an intoxication. Those gaps limit what can responsibly be concluded from the consolidated tally.
Officials have urged attendees to prioritise basic safety at large events, El Colombiano reported. Any fuller assessment of the weekend will require the results of the outstanding forensic work and any further statement from the health authorities. Until then, the consolidated figures offer a clear but limited picture: 193 medical consultations, 107 substance-related intoxications, seven hospital transfers and two deaths.
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