The opera house will require all eligible adult employees and audience members to get Covid booster shots in order to enter, making its safety measures stricter than those on Broadway or other venues.
The Met is the first major performing arts organization in the city to announce a booster-shot mandate that will apply to audiences as well as staff members. The city has seen a doubling of coronaviruses cases over the past two weeks, and the policy was announced as a result.
Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, said in an interview that they should be setting an example. Hopefully, we will have an influence on other performing arts companies. Everyone is going to be doing this soon.
It's not the first time that performing arts organizations have imposed measures that went beyond government mandates to keep audiences safe. When Broadway theaters announced over the summer that they would require audiences to be vaccine and masked, it was a few days before New York City imposed a vaccine mandate for a variety of indoor spaces.
Since the Met reopened after losing more than a full season to the Pandemic, staff and patrons have been required to be fully vaccined. Gelb said that it had become obvious to him that even stronger safeguards were needed.
The audience members and employees need to feel safe entering the building. This is the right move for me.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended booster shots for people who have received a second Pfizer or Moderna shot, or two months after a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
People who are eligible for booster shots will have to go to the opera house. If the performance falls within two weeks of the date that they become eligible for boosters, people will be allowed in unboosted. The people who are not yet eligible for their booster shots will still be allowed in. People will be required to wear face masks inside the opera house, but only when they are eating or drinking in the restricted areas.
Met officials said that they reviewed their new policy with leaders of the various unions that represent its workers in advance of Wednesday's announcement and described the union response to the rules as very positive.
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In October, choristers wore masks backstage during a performance of "Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg." The company has adopted strict safety measures since reopening.
The Met tightened their Covid rules, but it wasn't clear if other arts institutions would do the same. The Met would soon be adding a booster-shot mandate, according to Gelb, who told the leaders of Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center.
A performance of the ballet "Don Quixote" was canceled at the Opéra Bastille in Paris because of a person testing positive for the Covid virus. Several Broadway shows have had to cancel performances because of positive Covid tests. 37 players in the National Football League tested positive for the H1N1 on Monday, the highest single-day total since the beginning of the epidemic.
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Pfizer has a pill. Pfizer announced that a study showed that its oral Covid treatment helps stave off severe disease even from the Omicron variant. If the treatment was given within three days of the start of symptoms, it reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent.
U.S. mandates. New York State has a vaccine requirement for health care workers which the Supreme Court refused to block. New York has a new mask mandate, and California decided to restore it.
The Met is thought to be the first performing arts institution to implement a booster mandate. He said that he expected the Met's employees and audiences to be supportive of the new rule, and that he believed most of them have already had their booster shots. He said that this is going to be a relief.
The Met has presented 59 performances of nine different operas in front of a collective audience of 160,000 people since it reopened in late September, according to a news release.
The performances have not been canceled because of the virus.
Gelb said that with so many people in the building, they have to make sure that everyone is safe. Everyone in the company wants to be healthy.
