Hollywood COVID Protocols to Be Extended Until Sept. 30

Hollywood’s studios and unions will extend their COVID-19 safety protocols yet again, as the latest, super-contagious subvariant of Omicron spreads nationwide.

The current iteration of the deal was initially set to expire on Friday, but a source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday that it was being extended until September 30.

Containing guidelines on masking, vaccines and meal service, the agreement features language that allows protocols to ramp up when 8 or more new people amongst 100,000 are admitted to the hospital with COVID for seven straight days.

The Los Angeles Times was the first to report the news of the extension.

The protocols were last modified in May, when testing and masking obligations were relaxed in areas with low COVID hospital admissions and modifications were made to transportation and meal requirements. The agreement continued to permit producers to mandate vaccines on “Zone A” — the area with the cast and crew members that work most closely with them — of their sets and continued to require employers to hire COVID-19 compliance supervisors on productions.

Since then, the latest subvariant of Omicron, BA.5, has become the leading strain of the virus in the U.S. By late June, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said that workers on film and television sets would need to wear masks indoors again because cases had crossed the agreement’s escalation “trigger.”

In the past week alone, California recorded an average of 17,182 new cases and 37.1 deaths a day, according to the Los Angeles Times coronavirus tracker. Recent outbreaks of three or more confirmed cases in L.A. County have been recorded at Fox Sports in Century City, Riot Games near Sawtelle, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.