WWE is going a step further in its coronavirus safety measures \u2013 including fines.
\nThe company informed its staff and on-screen talent Friday afternoon \u2026<\/b>
\nWWE is going a step further in its coronavirus safety measures \u2013 including fines.
The company informed its staff and on-screen talent Friday afternoon that it will begin to enforce the wearing of protective masks. Anyone working a television taping \u2013 excluding performers working on camera \u2013 must wear a mask at all times or risk a $500 fine. The penalty increases to $1,000 thereafter for anyone with a second offense.
PW Insider was the first to report the new policy, which a WWE spokesman confirmed to The Post.
The intensified rules come after multiple WWE employees, including announcer Renee Young, interviewer Kayla Braxton, and backstage producers Jamie Noble and Adam Pearce, tested positive for coronavirus over the past three weeks. The four all publicly announced their diagnosis.
WWE officially began testing employees for coronavirus before shows after a developmental wrestler who was in the company\u2019s Performance Center in Orlando, tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-June. Before that, the company was issuing wellness and temperature checks to anyone entering its closed sets and had people adhere to social distancing guidelines backstage.
Over the past months, the developmental talent and rare friends and family members around the ring \u2013 behind hockey-style Plexiglas \u2013 were not wearing masks on camera, but were never told not to by the company. Since the outbreak of positive tests in WWE, a large number of \u201ccrowd\u201d members had begun wearing masks during television tapings. The state of Florida has become a hot spot for the coronavirus, reporting 9,488 new cases on Friday.
Paul \u201cTriple H\u201d Levesque, WWE\u2019s executive vice president, global talent strategy and development, told The Post in June that the company\u2019s policy is constantly adapting to the current situation it faces.
\u201cThat\u2019s what the last few months have been, us doing the best we can in this environment, with first and foremost keeping everybody\u2019s health and safety in the forefront and evolving to however we can make that the first priority,\u201d Levesque said.<\/p>\n