diff --git a/tracing-opentelemetry/src/subscriber.rs b/tracing-opentelemetry/src/subscriber.rs
index 9a781aa9bf..f0936271e8 100644
--- a/tracing-opentelemetry/src/subscriber.rs
+++ b/tracing-opentelemetry/src/subscriber.rs
@@ -620,8 +620,8 @@ where
     /// [`ERROR`]: tracing::Level::ERROR
     /// [`Error`]: opentelemetry::trace::StatusCode::Error
     fn on_event(&self, event: &Event<'_>, ctx: Context<'_, C>) {
-        // Ignore events that are not in the context of a span
-        if let Some(span) = ctx.lookup_current() {
+        // Ignore events that have no explicit parent set *and* are not in the context of a span
+        if let Some(span) = ctx.event_span(event) {
             // Performing read operations before getting a write lock to avoid a deadlock
             // See https://github.com/tokio-rs/tracing/issues/763
             #[cfg(feature = "tracing-log")]