Ahead of Oscars, COVID Concerns Loom as Hollywood Parties Almost as Usual

variety.com:

Oscars?That’s the big question as Hollywood prepares to celebrate itself on Sunday. Organizers are taking precautions to prevent the 2022 Academy Awards from being a super-spreader, as other awards shows and film festivals have proven to be in the pandemic era.

Attendees will have to show two negative PCR tests and be fully vaccinated in order to attend the festivities. On Friday, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences updated its COVID protocols and rules, announcing that people “..who tested positive for COVID-19 and are within a zero to five-day window from the date of their first positive test are not permitted to attend under any circumstances.”There’s a reason that the rules are so stringent.

This year’s Academy Awards kicks off as COVID infections are once again on the rise. On Thursday, public health officials announced that cases of BA.2, the new and highly contagious sub-variant of omicron, climbed 130% in a week, though cases remain low.

Adding to the unease is the fact that the BAFTA Awards on March 13 appears to have been a variable Petri dish with studios privately reporting that dozens of executives contracted COVID at the event — stars such as Kenneth Branagh and Ciaran Hinds and “The Mitchells vs.