There is genuine concern in Los Angeles county that the increasing number of COVID hospitalizations may mean a dangerous lack of ICU beds, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping a continued relaxing of state and municipal stay at home orders. Restaurants and hair salons were allowed to open at reduced capacity last week. And on Friday, production will be given the green light to begin again in Hollywood.
California had already announced that filmed production could resume on June 12, but the state has reopened gradually on a county by county basis determined by the number of active cases and hospitalizations. Despite Los Angeles being the epicenter of cases in the state, the County Health Department is also moving forward with allowing production to resume. This comes on the same day Disneyland announced a proposal to reopen on July 17.
LA also that on Friday announced that gyms, zoos, day camps, galleries, hotels and pro sports arenas (without live audiences) can reopen specific COVID protocols. At a news conference, LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer remarked, “No, we are completely not out of the woods, we are still in the middle of the woods and we still have a lot of risk. I know how desperate people are to get be able to get back to events but that is not in our health officer order nor is it in the state health officer order.”
Ferrer continues to see a downward overall trend despite an uptick this week. On Tuesday, the County reported 1,275 new cases and 61 deaths.
Speaking in Oakland earlier in the day, Governor Gavin Newsom noted, “As we phase-in, in a responsible way, a reopening of the economy, we’ve made it abundantly clear that we anticipate an increase in the total number of positive cases But we’ve also made it abundantly clear the concurrent recognition and commitment that we are in a substantially different place than we were 90 days ago. We have hundreds of millions of masks now in our possession.”
Whether a majority of the population wears those masks remains to be seen.
From a production standpoint, getting up and going is easier said than done. While a task force laid out proposed regulations to resume filming last week, the major Unions have not officially signed off on them as of yet. It is expected any filming in the Hollywood area won’t begin until July at the earliest.
Production is already inching toward resuming in other parts of the country, but one prominent area still waiting for clarification in the New York Metropolitan area.