Amid the increase in COVID-19 cases in Southern California after the holidays, SAG-AFTRA, the Producers Guild of America and the Joint Policy Committee are together recommending a “temporary suspension of face-to-face production in Southern California”. Together, the organizations represent thousands of actors, producers, commercial advertisers and advertising agencies.
“Southern California hospitals are facing a crisis like never before,” said SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris in the joint statement. “Patients are dying in ambulances waiting for treatment because the hospital’s emergency rooms are full. This is not a safe environment for personal production right now. “
Organizations are encouraging the suspension of production until more hospital beds are available. Like Variety Most major TV studios, including CBS TV Studios, Warner Bros. TV, Universal TV and Walt Disney, 20th TV and ABC Signature last week extended their vacation production hiatus to mid-January.
SAG-AFTRA members living in Southern California are encouraged to stay home, according to the joint statement, and “to refrain from accepting jobs on set in the coming weeks”. All actors who are scheduled to work in the coming weeks and have safety concerns at the site are encouraged to contact SAG-AFTRA.
“Even putting aside the risk of acquiring COVID on the set – a risk that we have done a lot to mitigate through our safety protocols – the production on the set always presents some risk of injury, whether due to a maneuver that went wrong, an equipment failure or a varied garden fall, ”said David White, national executive director of SAG-AFTRA. “At the moment, with few or no hospital beds available, it is difficult to understand how an injured worker on the set should seek treatment.”
White also noted appreciation for the studios and producers who have already stopped production preventively.
In Los Angeles alone, 12,488 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Sunday, with a seven-day daily average of 77,520, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The positivity rate of the current test is 18.4%. On Sunday night, 7,544 people in LA are hospitalized with COVID-19.
In a separate statement issued by the PGA, Presidents Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher also encouraged any project filmed in the region to take a break, and recognizing that “these are difficult times and this is a difficult decision”, but said that producers act as leaders in both production and the entertainment community.
“Independent producers can help to hold the line in this crisis by taking the difficult, but responsible, step of postponing production for now,” they said. “We can and will do whatever it takes to protect our cast and crew, and our community.”
The comprehensive recommendation affects commercial production, as well as cinema and TV. JPC’s chief negotiator, Stacy Marcus, said that “it is simply too great a risk for artists, staff and industry personnel to continue production knowing that hospitals are in crisis and the number of cases continues to rise.”