A major Hollywood studio has reintroduced the Covid mask requirement for fear of rising virus rates and a new heavily mutated variant.
Lionsgate — best known for its ‘Saw’ and ‘Hunger Games’ horror franchises — is again encouraging employees at its Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters to don face coverings after several employees tested positive.
It’s also urging employees to test themselves before they get to their desks – and to notify managers if they test positive or have symptoms of the virus.
The company, which employs up to 5,000 people, said the rules would apply “until further notice”.
This comes after a college in Atlanta, Georgia also reinstated mask requirements and doctors began calling for mask requirements in healthcare settings.
Across the country, Covid hospitalizations have risen for five straight weeks, although they are still three times lower than at this time last year.
And doctors have reported that the patients treated over the past week are not as ill as those they have treated during previous waves of the pandemic.
Lionsgate, a Hollywood studio, has instructed almost half of its employees to go back to wearing face masks. The arrangement is in effect at their facility in Santa Monica, California until further notice
Hospitalizations in the US have risen for the fifth straight week, but are also just under a third of the level at this time last year
The number of Covid deaths currently remains stable, having risen by four percent in a week. They’re hovering around record lows
The face mask rule was revealed in an email signed by Lionsgate response manager Sommer McElroy, Deadline reports.
It states: “Employees must wear a medical face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) indoors.”
‘[This is] except when they are alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating at the desk or work station, actively drinking, or when they are the only person present in a large open workspace.
Employees are also required to notify their managers if they have traveled anywhere outside of Santa Monica in the past 10 days.
The move comes at an already turbulent time for Hollywood. Like all other major studios, Lionsgate is struggling with an actor and writers strike that is delaying important projects.
The move came as the Los Angeles Department of Health said there had been a “small” increase in Covid “indicators” — cases, hospitalizations and deaths — in recent weeks.
Nationwide, the most recent official data shows that in the week ended August 12, there were 12,613 admissions in which the patient contracted Covid.
This was the fifth straight week that hospital admissions for the virus had risen, and a fifth more than the week before.
However, this is still almost a third of the values at the same time last year.
The number of deaths also remains unchanged: 484 were reported in the last week, up just four percent from the 465 in the last seven-day period.
There is no official data on Covid cases as only around 40,000 tests are carried out per day.
But test positivity — the proportion of tests that came back positive — has doubled over the past month.
The increases come amid concerns about Covid variants EG.5 and a new strain scientists fear could spark another wave of infections, dubbed BA.X or BA.2.86.
Surveillance shows that the EG.5 strain is now dominant in the US, with experts raising concerns that it may be more transmissible than previous variants.
So far, only six cases of BA.X have been registered – only one of them in Michigan in the USA.
However, there are concerns about the strain as it has more than 30 mutations and is genetically distinct from all other variants currently circulating.
This increases the risk that it is better able to evade immunity to trigger an infection.
A worker offers a face mask to a man at the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco in August 2021 during the pandemic
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned over the weekend he was “very concerned” about the new strain, saying it may be more contagious than other variants.
But currently, he added, there’s no evidence it’s more likely to lead to serious illness or death.
The Hollywood studio’s move comes after Morris Brown College in Atlanta, a private liberal arts college, also ordered students and staff to wear face masks in hallways and lecture rooms.
The college says the rules are in place for two weeks and came into effect following “reports of positive cases among students”.
Students are also being told to maintain social distancing and all parties and large gatherings have been banned.
The number of Covid cases in Georgia has risen for three straight weeks, but overall the number of infections and hospital admissions remains low.