County Health Site Reports 14 Covid Cases At The Academy Movie Museum

Add the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures to the list of businesses and institutions suffering a Covid outbreak in the current surge.

The Los Angeles County Public Health web site on Thursday reported 14 Covid-19 cases on the museum staff, but listed no known cases among visitors. For visitors, the museum has been requiring either full vaccination or a negative test within 72 hours before admission.

After years of delay, the film museum opened with considerable fanfare in September, shortly before a winter surge began driving Covid numbers up in Los Angeles and around the world. The museum has been operating at reduced capacity and spacing admissions to mitigate exposure to the virus.

So far, the museum has continued to operate normally under those protocols, but the Oscar Experience exhibit–in which people may be less widely spaced than in the galleries– has been temporarily closed. Theaters and restaurant facilities at the museum remain open. None of the 14 diagnosed cases is known to have resulted in serious illness at this point, a person familiar with the outbreak said on Thursday. The museum has about 350 employees, so the reported outbreak has affected about 4 percent of the staff.

The film business has seen a recent round of Covid-related shutdowns, as the film Academy’s Governors Awards, the Sundance Film Festival, the Palm Springs Film Festival, the Critics Choice Awards have joined the Grammys in postponing or suspending events.