Grammys Postponed Due To COVID, Eyeing March Show
On 1/5/21 at 6:35 PM EST
In a joint statement received by
Newsweek, Recording Academy Chair and Interim President/CEO, Harvey Mason, Jr., CBS Executive Vice President, Specials, Music, Live Events and Alternative Programming Jack Sussman, and Grammys Executive Producer Ben Winston announced the change. The full statement can be found below: After thoughtful conversations with health experts, our host and artists scheduled to appear, we are rescheduling The 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards® to be broadcast Sunday, March 14, 2021. The deteriorating COVID situation in Los Angeles, with hospital services being overwhelmed, ICUs having reached capacity, and new guidance from state and local governments have all led us to conclude that postponing our show was the right thing to do. Nothing is more important than the health and safety of those in our music community and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly on producing the show.
More than 2,200 people who work at hospitals in L.A. County tested positive for the coronavirus in December alone.
“It is getting harder and harder for healthcare workers to care for those coming to the hospital with gunshot wounds, heart attacks, strokes and injuries from car accidents,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis. “Hospitals are declaring internal disasters and having to open church gyms to serve as hospital units.”
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Over the past week, L.A. County averaged 183 COVID-19 deaths a day the equivalent of one every eight minutes and 13,500 new coronavirus infections, a count expected to grow with the reopening of testing sites after the holidays. The county’s cumulative coronavirus case count now tops 841,000.
Grammy Awards Postponed From January To March Due To Coronavirus Concerns
The Grammy Awards will be postponed from its planned January 31 air date to March 14 due to concerns over the spread of coronavirus. The annual event honors the best in the music industry and will be held at the later date at the same venue, the Staples Center. There will be a modified ceremony to reflect social distancing due to the pandemic.
The Daily Show s Trevor Noah will remain the host of the event.
In a statement on the Grammy Awards official site, Harvey Mason Jr., Chair and Interim President/CEO of the Recording Academy; Jack Sussman, Executive Vice President, Specials for CBS; and Ben Winston, Grammy Awards Executive Producer, Fulwell 73 Productions wrote the following regarding the switch.
Conditions at Los Angeles County hospitals are worsening by the day, forcing officials to take increasingly desperate measures to prevent the healthcare system from crumbling under a crush of COVID-19 patients.
Methodist Hospital of Southern California has taken the grim step of convening a triage team that will “make the difficult, but necessary decisions about allocating limited resources” to critically ill patients “based on the best medical information available,” officials said in a statement.
As of Wednesday, that team “has yet to find the need to ration any care,” said Cliff Daniels, a senior vice president and chief strategy officer for the Arcadia-based hospital.