Hollywood Studio Lionsgate Announces Mask Mandates Will Be Put Back In Place

The major Hollywood movie studio Lionsgate has announced that it will be reimposing mask mandates in its office.

Lionsgate Brings Back Mask Mandates

This was announced by Sommer McElroy, response manager for Lionsgate/Starz, in an internal memo after there was a spike in COVID-19 cases among employees.

“Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” McElroy wrote, according to Deadline.

McElroy went on to say that Lionsgate will be enacting a “building entry policy” in which each employee is “required to perform a daily self-screening prior to coming to the office each day” and must notify McElroy if there are “new or worsening symptoms” or if they “travelled internationally in the last 10 days.”

On top of that, Lionsgate will be conducting tracing and notify “all individuals who have been in close contact with employees who have tested positive for COVID-19,” according to Fox News, which also obtained the memo.

McElroy specifically said that the mask mandate is “effective immediately,” and that surgical mask and KN95s will be available at the front desk, with N95s also being available upon request. In addition, Lionsgate will provide at-home-test-kits to all staff if they ask for them.

Related: Universities Reinstate Mask Mandates Around The Country

Expert Fires Back

McElroy explained that these rules are being put in place after several employees tested positive for COVID-19 as cases began to go up.

However, the Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier explained that “the reason you have an uptick in cases right now is not because you did something wrong, it’s because for the last several years, we’ve seen an uptick in cases in the winter, and we also see one in the end of summer. This is just a normal cycle of this respiratory virus.”

Dr. Saphier vehemently disagrees with what Lionsgate is doing when it comes to these mandates.

“Anyone who is immunocompromised, or if you work with people who are immunocompromised, those are the people in appropriate settings [that] should consider wearing a high quality mask, like an N-95, not a single layer of cloth or surgical mask,” she continued. “Those don’t actually work as we’ve seen by many, many studies. But to actually say, you know, to wear masks again in the house and just being in public spaces, we have to move on.”

Related: Biden Says It’s ‘Probably Premature’ To Get Rid Of COVID Mask Mandates

Hollywood Only Recently Relaxed Mask Mandates

It was only back in May that Hollywood finally relaxed the strict COVID-19 mandates that it had been imposing on its workers for years.

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“For the past three years, workers throughout the entertainment community have benefited from our robust protections exceeding the practices of many other industries,” the entertainment unions said at the time, according to Variety.

“With the public health emergency now ending and the expiration of the COVID-19 Safety Agreement, individual employers continue to be responsible for ensuring safe workplaces for their employees, but must seek separate agreement with the applicable joint unions before implementing any COVID safety protocols,” the unions continued.

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Being that Hollywood is located in the state of California, one of the most notoriously liberal states in the country, it is sadly no surprise that a major studio like Lionsgate is so eager to return to strict mask mandates. Our hearts go out to the Lionsgate employees who are forced to abide by these ridiculous rules in order to keep their jobs.