Hollywood’s Covid Protocols Get Expiration Date
deadline.comHollywood’s Covid protocols will expire on May 12, and the vaccination mandate — which gave producers the right to require Covid vaccinations as a condition of employment — will end for all productions except those that were implemented prior to May 12, which can continue to apply for the remainder of the production or the season.
The Return-to-Work Agreement had been set to expire on Saturday. First enacted in September 2020 per an agreement between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and Hollywood’s unions, the protocols allowed productions to rebound after an industrywide lockdown early on in the pandemic.
The protocols originally had been set to expire on April 30, 2021, but were extended nearly a dozen times, including in June of 2021, when producers were given “the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A on a production-by-production basis.” Zone A, where unmasked actors work, is the most restrictive of the safe work zones on sets.
A statement issued today by the AMPTP says: “The Return to Work Agreement, set to expire on April 1, 2023, will now will continue to remain in effect through May 11, 2023.
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